For the first time, the general public got to see the glitzy Hollywood Film Awards ceremony, an annual event that acts like a prologue to the real awards season. It’s essentially just a party where stars pick up one or more piece of metal to add to their cabinets.
The awards were created by Carlos de Abreu, who leads a small team to pick the winners. They never announce nominees and in fact, members of the Hollywood community even knew who was going to win before the ceremony started.
Usually, the ceremony isn’t televised, but CBS, desperate to have some kind of film awards show, jumped on the chance to air it. So, we got to see Johnny Depp’s bizarre speech as it unfolded.
The winners don’t really have an impact on the awards season, but de Abreu gives actors in more popular films, that might not have earned critical acclaim, a chance to win something for their efforts.
Robert Duvall won the Supporting Actor award for The Judge, while they made sure Chris Rock won something called the “Comedy Film Award” for his Top Five. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy won a funny award called “Blockbuster Award.”
The strangest winner was easily Jean-Marc Vallee for Breakthrough Director for Wild. The committee must have forgotten about last year’s Dallas Buyers Club.
Here are some other big winners:
Career Achievement - Michael Keaton, star of Birdman
Film - Gone Girl
Director - Michael Tyldum, The Imitation Game
Actor - Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
Actress - Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Supporting Actor - Robert Duvall, The Judge
Supporting Actress - Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Ensemble - Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo & Channing Tatum, Foxcatcher
Breakout Actress - Shailene Woodley, The Fault in Our Stars
Breakout Actor - Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything
Breakthrough Director - Jean-Marc Vallee, Wild
New Hollywood Award- Jack O’Connell, Unbroken
Song Award - Janelle Monae
Animation - How To Train Your Dragon 2
Blockbuster - Guardians of the Galaxy
Documentary - Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
Comedy Film - Chris Rock, Top Five
image of Ben Affleck courtesy of INFphoto.com