Hollywood Film Festival's Prizes

The 11th Annual Hollywood Film Festival's "Hollywood Awards(r)" ceremony, honoring independent filmmakers and established Hollywood professionals, was held last night before a standing-room-only audience of over 1,200 Hollywood Film Festival(r) attendees at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.
The festival, presented by STARZ, announced this year's winner of the "Hollywood Movie of the Year Award" -- Zach Snyder's "300" -- which was chosen by the public voting online at the Yahoo! Movies website. The voting site received 20 million visitors and 125,000 votes were cast. The nominees for the "Hollywood Movie of the Year Award" were: "300," "The Bourne Ultimatum," "Hairspray," "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," "Ocean's Thirteen," "Ratatouille," "Shrek the Third," "The Simpsons Movie," "Spider-Man 3," and "Transformers."

The Hollywood Film Festival(r) presented the "Hollywood World Award" to "4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS" by Cristian Mungiu. A drama from Romania, distributed by IFC Films and starring Anamaria Marinco, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Alexandru Potocean, and Luminita Gheorghiu, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" is a story centered around an illegal abortion.

Special honors went to Richard Gere, Marion Cotillard, John Travolta, Jennifer Connelly, Ellen Page and Casey Affleck for acting, the cast of "Hairspray" (John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Brittany Snow, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, Allison Janney, and Nikki Blonsky) for ensemble acting; Ben Affleck and Marc Forster for directing, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron for producing, Christopher Hampton and Diablo Cody for screenwriting, "Ratatouille," directed by Brad Bird, for animation, Mark Isham for film composing, Stephen Goldblatt for cinematography, Joe Hutshing for editing, Scott Farrar ("Transformers") for visual effects and Dante Ferretti for production design.

The winners of the festival's film competition were announced Sunday night at the "Hollywood Discovery Awards(r) Awards Presentation Ceremony at ArcLight Cinemas. This year's winners are: "GONE WITH THE WOMAN" by Petter Naess as Best Feature Film, "KNEE DEEP" by Michael Chandler as Best Documentary, "CROSSING THE HEART" by Steven Hood as Best Short Subject, "A Gentlemen's Duel" by Francisco Ruiz and Sean McNally as Best Animated Short Subject, and TIMZ "IRAQ" by Timz, aka Tommy Hanna, as Best Music Video.

Celebrities and Hollywood notables who attended the Hollywood Awards included Robert B. Clasen - Chairman and CEO of Starz Entertainment, Stephan Shelanski - Executive Vice President of Starz Entertainment, Colin Brown - Editor-in-Chief of "Screen International," Charles Koones - President and Publisher of The Variety Group, and Mimi Eddy - International President of John Robert Powers, as well as Kirstie Alley, Cameron Crowe, Will Ferrell, Megan Fox, Janeane Garofalo, Terry George, Paul Haggis, Marcia Gay Harden, Khaled Hosseini, Janet Jackson, Brad Pitt, Kelly Preston, Joel Schumacher, Michael Sheen, Aaron Sorkin, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, 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.

The sponsors of the Hollywood Film Festival include presenter sponsor Starz Entertainment, and American Cinema Editors, American Society of Cinematographers, ArcLight Cinemas, Canyon Design Group, Celebrity Services, Entertainment Tonight, FilmMaker Magazine, Film Threat, Focus Features, Fox Searchlight, Heineken, ICM, ILM, John Robert Powers, Los Angeles Times, Motion Picture Editors Guild, New Line Cinema, PR Newswire, Screen International, Shout, Universal Pictures, United Artists, Variety, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros., Weston/Mason, William Morris Agency and YAHOO! Movies, Inc., among others.

The festival and awards presenter is Starz Entertainment, LLC, a premium movie service provider operating in the United States. It offers 16 movie channels including the flagship Starz(r) and Encore(r) brands with approximately 15.8 million and 28.2 million subscribers respectively. Starz Entertainment airs more than 1,000 movies per month across its pay TV channels and offers advanced services including Starz HD, Starz On Demand and VongoSM. Starz Entertainment (www.starz.com) is an operating unit of Starz, LLC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty Media Corporation that is attributed to Liberty Capital Group.