Hollywood Film Festival® News

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Actor Casey Affleck will receive the "Hollywood Breakthrough Actor of the Year Award," Academy Award-winning screenwriter Christopher Hampton will be honored with the "Hollywood Screenwriter of the Year Award," Disney/Pixar's "Ratatouille," directed by Academy Award-winning director Brad Bird, will get the "Hollywood Animation of the Year Award," and DreamWorks'/Paramount Pictures' "Transformers" and Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar will receive the "Hollywood Visual Effects of the Year Award."

The "Hollywood Awards" will be bestowed upon the honorees during the Hollywood Awards Gala Ceremony on Monday evening, October 22, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

The announcement was made today by Carlos de Abreu, Founder and Executive Director of the Hollywood Film Festival. Said Mr. de Abreu, "We are honored that Casey Affleck, Christopher Hampton, Brad Bird and Scott Farrar will be honored for their outstanding work and creative vision at this year's festival."

CASEY AFFLECK stars this fall in the character drama "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." Written and directed by Andrew Dominik, the film stars Affleck as Robert Ford opposite Brad Pitt's Jesse James. The film also stars Sam Rockwell and Sam Shepard. Casey Affleck will also be seen in "Gone, Baby, Gone," based on Dennis Lehane's novel of the same title. Marking the directorial debut of Ben Affleck, who also adapted the screenplay, the film tells the story of two Boston detectives in search of a four-year-old girl who has been kidnapped. Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman and Michelle Monaghan also star in the film. An accomplished screenwriter, Casey Affleck recently penned the original screenplay for "Aardvark Art's Ark," an animated family film that he also will executive produce.

This summer, Affleck starred in the latest installment of the popular "Ocean's" series, "Ocean's Thirteen," which reunited the starring ensemble cast and director Steven Soderbergh. Previously, he co-wrote, with Matt Damon, Gus Van Sant's independent road movie "Gerry," also starring alongside Matt Damon in the film. He has also appeared in Gus Van Sant's "Good Will Hunting" and "To Die For"; "Hamlet," with Ethan Hawke and Julia Stiles; Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven" and "Ocean's Twelve"; and Tony Goldwyn's "The Last Kiss." Casey Affleck's other film credits include "Lonesome Jim," "Soul Survivors," "American Pie 2," "Attention Shoppers," "Committed," "Drowning Mona," "Floating," "American Pie," "200 Cigarettes," "Desert Blue," and "Race the Sun." On the stage, Affleck appeared in the West End debut of Kenneth Lonergan's award-winning play "This Is Our Youth." On television, he was seen in the ABC miniseries "The Kennedys of Massachusetts" and the PBS Telefilm "Lemon Sky," based on Lanford Wilson's play and starring Kevin Bacon.

Academy Award-winning screenwriter CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON has written the screenplay adaptation for one of 2007's most highly anticipated films, "Atonement." Based on Ian McEwan's best-selling 2002 novel of the same name, the classic British romance is directed by BAFTA Award winner Joe Wright ("Pride & Prejudice") and stars James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Romola Garai, Saoirse Ronan, and Vanessa Redgrave.

Christopher Hampton won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for "Dangerous Liaisons," which he adapted from his own stage play (itself an adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos's novel). The film version was directed by Stephen Frears and also brought Hampton BAFTA, London Film Critics Circle, and Writers Guild of America Awards. In addition to "Dangerous Liaisons" with the Royal Shakespeare Company, his theater work includes the stage adaptation of "Sunset Boulevard" for Andrew Lloyd Webber, which brought Tony Awards to Hampton for both Book and Lyrics; his translation of Yasmina Reza's "Art" won Olivier and Tony Awards, and ran for 2,500 performances in the West End. He has directed and adapted three films to date: "Carrington," based on Michael Holroyd's book, for which Hampton was awarded Special Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes International Film Festival; "The Secret Agent," based on the Joseph Conrad novel and starring Bob Hoskins and Patricia Arquette; and "Imagining Argentina," based on Lawrence Thornton's novel and starring Antonio Banderas and Emma Thompson.

"RATATOUILLE," an animated feature from Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar Animation Studios, will receive the festival's "Hollywood Animation of the Year Award." By Academy Award-winning director Brad Bird, "Ratatouille" takes us into an entirely new world where the unthinkable combination of a rat and a five-star gourmet restaurant come together in a hilarious animated-adventure about a rat named Remy who dreams of becoming a great chef despite his family's wishes and the obvious problem of being a rat in a decidedly rodent-phobic profession. Brad Bird is the director of the Academy Award-winning "The Incredibles," the computer animated comedy-adventure from Pixar Animation Studios.

Prior to joining Pixar, Brad Bird wrote and directed the critically acclaimed 1999 animated feature, "The Iron Giant," which won the International Animated Film Society's Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Theatrical Feature. Bird began his first animated film at the age of eleven, and finished it nearly three years later. The film brought him to the attention of Walt Disney Studios where, at age fourteen, he was mentored by Milt Kahl, one of a distinguished group of Disney's legendary animators. Bird eventually worked as an animator at Disney and other studios. Brad Bird's credits include acting as executive consultant on "The Simpsons," the longest running and most celebrated animated television series of all time, and "King of the Hill." He also created, wrote, directed and co-produced the "Family Dog" episode of Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories," and co-wrote the screenplay for the live-action feature "*batteries not included."

"TRANSFORMERS" will be honored with the festival's "Hollywood Visual Effects of the Year Award." From DreamWorks SKG and Paramount Pictures, and directed by Michael Bay, this summer sci-fi action-adventure enthralled audiences with its extraordinary and thrilling visual effects. Oscar(r)-winning visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar of Industrial Light & Magic supervised the visual effects for "Transformers." Based on Hasbro's Transformers™ Action Figures, the film brings a centuries-old war between races of robotic aliens - the Autobots and the Decepticons - to planet earth, and it stars Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Anthony Anderson, Megan Fox, Rachael Taylor with John Turturro and Jon Voight.

Scott Farrar joined Industrial Light & Magic in 1981 as a camera operator on "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and was promoted to visual effects supervisor on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" in 1987. In 1985, Farrar received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for his work on "Cocoon." His ability to carry out the vision of filmmakers has earned him several additional honors, including Oscar(r) nominations for "Backdraft" in 1991 and "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" in 2001. On "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," ILM created the first real-time interactive on-set visualization process allowing filmmakers to place actors in virtual sets providing complete freedom with camera moves, earning Scott Farrar a British Academy Award nomination for best achievement in visual effects. Scott Farrar's futuristic environments in "Minority Report" earned him another British Academy Award nomination. He was most recently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." His other projects at ILM include "XXX: State of the Union," "The Pacifier," "Peter Pan," "Tears of the Sun," "Space Cowboys," "The Haunting," "Deep Impact" and "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," to name a few.

Prior years' Hollywood Awards Gala Ceremony nominees, honorees and presenters have been a virtual "who's who" of Hollywood's A-list talent and executives, including Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, Maria Bello, Annette Bening, Halle Berry, Orlando Bloom, Matthew Broderick, Sandra Bullock, Chris Columbus, Cameron Crowe, Russell Crowe, Penelope Cruz, Billy Crystal, Benicio Del Toro, Robert De Niro, Danny DeVito, Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Clint Eastwood, Emilio Estevez, Rupert Everett, Colin Farrell, Harrison Ford, Jodie Foster, Jamie Foxx, Mel Gibson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Haggis, Tom Hanks, Goldie Hawn, Anthony Hopkins, Ron Howard, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Diane Keaton, Nicole Kidman, Greg Kinnear, Ashton Kutcher, Laura Linney, Lucy Liu, George Lucas, Michael Mann, Rachel McAdams, Matthew McConaughey, Ewan McGregor, Sam Mendes, Demi Moore, Mike Myers, Michael Pena, Joaquin Phoenix, Sydney Pollack, Keanu Reeves, Susan Sarandon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Martin Scorsese, Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Sharon Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Charlize Theron, Robert Towne, John Travolta, Naomi Watts, Forest Whitaker, and Robin Williams, among many 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® and Encore® 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.

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