The Dark Knight wins Hollywood Movie of the Year Award

October 29, 2008

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The 12th Annual Hollywood Film Festival’s “Hollywood Awards®” ceremony was held last Monday night before a standing-room-only audience of over 1,100 Hollywood Film Festival® attendees at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

The festival and awards, co-chaired by Paul Haggis and presented by Starz, announced this year’s winner of the “Hollywood Movie of the Year Award” — Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” — which was chosen by the public voting online at the Yahoo! Movies website. The voting site received 20 million unique visitors and over 125,000 votes were cast. The nominees for the “Hollywood Movie of the Year Award” were: “The Dark Knight,” “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!,” “Hancock,” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” “Iron Man,” “Kung Fu Panda,” “Sex and the City,” “Tropic Thunder,” “Wall-E,” and “Wanted.”

The winners of the festival’s film competition were announced Sunday night at the “Hollywood Discovery Awards® Presentation Ceremony at ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood. This year’s winners are: “Cook County” by David Pomes — Best Feature Film, “The Forgotten Woman” by Dilip Mehta — Best Documentary, “The Magistical” by Danny Oakley and John M. Cernak — Best Animation, “Janey Mary” by Paul Brady — Best Short Subject, “Don’t Cry (The Black Ghosts)” by Jack Pettibone — Hollywood Mobile Award.

Special honors went to Dustin Hoffman for career achievement, Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder” for comedy, Josh Brolin, Kirstin Scott Thomas, Marisa Tomei, James Franco, Sally Hawkins and Robert Pattinson for acting; Clint Eastwood and John Patrick Shanley for directing; Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven and Emma Thomas for producing; John Patrick Shanley and Dustin Lance Black for screenwriting; “Wall-E,” directed by Andrew Stanton, for animation; Danny Elfman for film composing; Mandy Walker for cinematography; Daniel P. Hanley and Mike Hill for editing; John Nelson and Ben Snow (”Iron Man”) for visual effects; Sarah Greenwood for production design; and Deborah Hopper for costume design.

In addition “Variety” announced and introduced this year’s “10 Actors to Watch” award recipients: Viola Davis, Kat Dennings, Rebecca Hall, Armie Hammer, Taraji Henson, Michael Kelly, Melissa Leo, Chris Pine, Michael Shannon and Mia Wasikowska.

The festival also honored the Screen Actors Guild on its 75th anniversary.

Celebrities and Hollywood notables who attended the Hollywood Awards included Bill Myers - President and COO of Starz Entertainment, Stephan Shelanski - Executive Vice President of Starz Entertainment, Alan Rosenberg - Screen Actors Guild, and Neil Stiles - President and Publisher of “Variety,” as well as Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Camilla Belle, Ernest Borgnine, Bruce Cohen, Ryan Gosling, Ron Howard, Bonnie Hunt, Richard Jenkins, Angelina Jolie, Dan Jinks, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jaime King, Diane Lane, Natalie Portman, Billy Ray, Jane Russell, Michael Sheen, Connie Stevens, Oliver Stone, and Joe Wright to name a few. The gala awards presentation Monday evening was hosted by Mary Hart of “Entertainment Tonight” and attendees were treated to the music of Johnny Crawford and his Orchestra.