Awards

The SXSW Film Festival announced its award winners last night at the Closing Awards Ceremony, hosted by comedian Eugene Mirman. The full list is available after the jump.

Austin filmmaker Amy Grappell received the Short Film Jury Award for the Documentary Short category for Quadrangle, an unconventional documentary about two "conventional" couples that swapped partners and lived in a group marriage in the early 70s. She also took home the SXSW Wholphin Award. Quadrangle previously received an honorable mention award after its premiere at Sundance this year, and has screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Grappell has been active in the Austin film community over the last decade as a director, writer, producer, actress and casting director. She serves on the Austin Film Society's "Docs in Progress" committee and received an AFS Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund grant in 2009 for Quadrangle. I met Amy in 2005 at SXSW where she premiered a documentary she had written and directed, Light From the East. Amy also produced and starred in the narrative feature Shady Grove (1996) that made its debut at an earlier  SXSW.

Other notable Austin connections:

• Tiny Furniture, the Feature Film Jury Award winner for Narrative Feature category, includes local filmmaker/actor Alex Karpovsky
• Locally made documentary Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission won the Audience Award winner for Excellence in Poster Design. 
• Petting Sharks, the Texas Shorts winner, was written and directed by University of Texas RTF grad Craig Elrod. His credits include Cleverboy's Playhouse (Cinematexas 2004), The Trouble With Jumpsuits (SXSW 2007), Clothes Horse (SXSW 2008), Polar Ops (Salvage Vanguard Micro Cinema 2009), and A Gentleman's Touch (AFF 2009). His feature script Floyd was a finalist for the 2007 Sundance Screenwriter's Lab.

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds) was at Austin Studios last night to receive an "honorary Texan" award at the 10th annual Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards last night at Austin Studios. This event, hosted by Austin Film Society, is held every year the night before SXSW opens. The 2010 honorees included Michael Nesmith, Quentin Tarantino, Catherine O'Hara, Lukas Haas and Bruce McGill. Proceeds from the Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards benefit the educational and artistic programs of the Austin Film Society, a 501(c)3 organization.

Check out more photos from the event on our Flickr site. And Anne Thompson has posted a video to IndieWire of Tarantino's great acceptance speech.

[Photo credit: Quentin Tarantino, by Debbie Cerda, on Flickr]

I realize I'm repeating my own joke with the headline, but it's too good not to reuse ... and when will I get to use it again? Ahem. Anyway, here's the Austin film-related news, starting with awards:

• Sandra Bullock, who owns local restaurant Bess and co-owns Walton's Fancy and Staple, also does a spot of acting when she's not running local businesses. Last night, she took home the Best Actress Oscar for her role in The Blind Side.
• The night before, she won a Razzie for her role in All About Steve ... and showed up at the awards ceremony, where she gave out DVDs of the film to all the Razzie members in attendance. Very nice.
• Austin was also represented at the Oscars by Ryan Bingham, who along with T-Bone Burnett won an Academy Award for Best Song, "The Weary Kind," from the movie Crazy Heart. Not only did Bingham and Burnett cite the work of the the late local musician Stephen Bruton on the film, but Jeff Bridges also remembered Bruton in his speech after winning Best Actor.

Of all the Austin red carpets and gala events I've been fortunate enough to attend in the past few years, my favorites have been at the annual Texas Film Hall of Fame. The red carpet is actually the entrance to the event, so I not only get to take photos of the honorees, but anyone I recognize who walks in, and sometimes people I don't recognize but who look fabulous, or whom everyone else is photographing. (Then I find out later who they are.) It's a long red carpet with enough room for just about everyone, the lighting is pretty good, and most of the familiar faces are willing to stop and be photographed.

Austin Film Society has just announced three inductees into the Texas Film Hall of Fame for 2010: Quentin Tarantino, Michael Nesmith and Bruce McGill. In addition, actor Thomas Haden Church will again emcee the event -- he did a great job last year, displaying a deadpan and slightly twisted sense of humor.

After the jump, I've added brief explanations of who the honorees are, in case you aren't acquainted with them. The awards ceremony will be on March 11, 2010 (the night before SXSW starts) at Austin Studios. Expect AFS to make a few more announcements about Texas Film Hall of Fame awards and presenters before then.

The Austin Film Critics Association announced their annual awards on Tuesday. The best movie of the year honor went to director Kathyrn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, a drama about a bomb disposal unit based in Baghdad, Iraq. Bigelow was also awarded Best Director, and the film, which played SXSW 2009, won the Best Cinematography category for Barry Ackroyd's work.

The Austin Film Award, given to a movie directed by a local filmmaker or shot in Austin, went to Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles. The film, which Jette reviewed, also won an award for Best Breakthrough Performance by Christian McKay, who played Welles.

The local critics' group awarded Best Original Screenplay to Austin favorite writer/director Quentin Tarantino's WWII-era movie Inglourious Basterds. Best Actress went to Melanie Laurent for her performance in the film, which we reviewed, with my personal favorite Christoph Waltz winning Best Supporting Actor.

Best Actor went to Colin Firth for his role in A Single Man, which has not yet had an Austin release, and Anna Kendrick received the honor of Best Supporting Actress for Up in the Air, which opens Friday in Austin.

The Austin Film Critics Association, of which Slackerwood editor Jette Kernion is a member, also voted on the top movies of the decade, a list headed by the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

You can read the full list of awards after the jump, including Top Films of 2009 and the Decade.

The 25th Annual Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced on Tuesday, and two Austin-related projects were honored with nominations:

• Christian McKay was nominated in the Best Supporting Male category for his portrayal of Orson Welles in local filmmaker Richard Linklater's latest feature, Me and Orson Welles. You can see photos of McKay and Linklater in our photo essay from the Me and Orson Welles red carpet in Austin.
• Dia Sokol, producer of Beeswax, was nominated for the Piaget Producers Award. Beeswax was filmed locally and starred many local filmmakers in acting roles. Jette reviewed the movie at SXSW this year; the above photo, with Sokol in the middle, was taken at the SXSW Q&A for Beeswax.

Austinites may recognize many other titles on the list, which you can read in full after the jump. A number of the nominated films played at SXSW or at Austin Film Festival this year. Beeswax director/editor Andrew Bujalski now lives in Austin, and can be seen below with SXSW Film Director Janet Pierson, who was also featured in the film.

As we head into Thanksgiving week, Austin-area filmmakers and film fans have a lot to be thankful for. Here are a few reasons:

• The Academy Award shortlist for Best Documentary Feature nominees was released last week. One of the 15 films was SXSW 2009 selection Garbage Dreams. The doc tells the story of the Zaballeen, who live in "garbage villages" made of the city's garbage, and until recently were the only system in place for trash removal. Their livelihood is now being threatened by international outsourcers. 
• Good news for another movie that premiered at SXSW 2009: B-Side Entertainment has picked up now-Austinite filmmaker Alex Karpovsky's latest film: Trust Us, This is All Made Up. Jette caught the movie in March and although it took a few minutes to get going, really enjoyed the long-form, detailed improv performance staged by T.J. Jagodowksi and David Pasquesi.
• One more from SXSW, this time 2008: David and Nathan Zellner's feature film Goliath will be out on DVD on January 12, 2010. You can pre-order it now from Amazon. Jette loved this Austin-made comedy about a guy who just can't live without his cat, which premiered at Sundance in 2008. Slackerwood interviewed the Zellners via email about the film.

New for 2010, the SXSW Film Conference and Festival has established the annual SXSW Film Design Awards, including a new competition for the "Excellence in Title Design" Award that will feature the best in contemporary title sequence design. All title sequences that exist as part of a completed film finished in 2009 or later are eligible, and includes international submissions. The deadline to submit is December 11, 2009.

Finalists will be announced in early February 2010, and will be showcased at a dedicated screening during the SXSW Film Festival. Contestants will be judged by an expert panel and will also be eligible to be chosen by the public for an Audience Award. Due in part to the success of the 2009 SXSW Film/AIGA Austin Film Poster Award and as part of the Design Awards, SXSW will continue to honor exceptional film posters under the "Excellence in Poster Design" label (open to all accepted films). 

Title sequence submissions are $10 per entry, and can be made via the SXSW Film Title Sequence Competition application form. All title sequences must be hosted online -- YouTube, Vimeo, or personal website. Finalists will be notified upon acceptance and will then need to send a broadcast-quality version of the sequence.

Austin Film Festival (AFF) has announced the 2009 Audience Award winners, and I'm happy to report that among the winners were a few Texas films as well as some of our favorites from the fest. AFF also announced the dates for next year's film festival and conference: October 21-28, 2010.

Throughout the week of the festival, audience members were invited to rate films by ballot after each screening. Check out Jenn Brown's review of Happy Ending, which was written and directed by Atsuriho Yamada, and which won the AFF Narrative Feature Competition audience award.

Another favorite film that won was Herpes Boy, in the Comedy Vanguard Audience Award category. I caught up with writer Byron Lane and director Nathaniel Atcheson at their second screening after-party, and they expressed gratitude to AFF for allowing them to premiere their film in Austin.

Texas writer/filmmaker Tisha Blood also scored a win in the Documentary Feature category for Torey's Distraction, which made its world premiere at AFF 2009. Torey's Distraction is the first in a slate from Dallas' M3 Films filManthropy division, which uses traditional and philanthropic business practices to produce and distribute movies with a message, and in turn, generate awareness and funding for nonprofit, philanthropic ventures. Their next project will document the efforts of Forgotten Diamonds, an organization that focuses on improving the literacy of people impacted by civil war in Sierra Leone.

Finally, congrats to Austin filmmaker Kat Candler (Jumping Off Bridges), whose short Love Bug won the Narrative Short Audience Award. A complete list of audience award winners is after the jump.

We were recording the latest Slackerwood podcast yesterday (which will be available soon) and I realized that Slackerwood hadn't yet published the list of Fantastic Fest 2009 award winners.

Some of our favorite films took home the prized beer steins this year: A Town Called Panic, which Jenn and I loved (check out my Cinematical review), won the Audience Award. Debbie was pleased that The Revenant took home an award for Best Horror Director, and interviewed Kerry Prior, the winning filmmaker. We're planning a special "extra" mini-podcast with that interview, which we'll publish in the next week.

The "Fantastic Feature" award for best film went to the Chilean thriller Mandrill, which sold out every screening very quickly so I couldn't see it myself. Producer/actor Marko Zaror was so pleased he did a flip onstage. Human Centipede, much discussed for its bizarrely graphic scenes in which the title creature is created, won Best Horror Film. The British dark comedy Down Terrace won top honors in the Next Wave competition.

I've reprinted the full list of award winners after the jump, plus a link to the video of Shakey Face competitors.