Lauren Bacall, Annette Bening, Jeff Bridges: Governors Awards 2009

Honorary Award recipient Lauren Bacall, the star of classics such as To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, How to Marry a Millionaire, and Designing Woman. Bacall was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for The Mirror Has Two Faces in 1996.
“A man at last,” the 85-year-old Bacall exclaimed while holding her Honorary Oscar. “I’m here to stay so you better get used to the idea.”

Three-time Oscar nominated actress Annette Bening toasts Honorary Award recipient Lauren Bacall during the 2009 Governors Awards in the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland on Saturday, November 14.

Gordon Willis, the cinematographer of classics such as The Godfather Part II, All the President’s Men, and The Purple Rose of Cairo, receives [...]

Warren Beatty, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg: Governors Awards 2009

Past Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award recipients Dino de Laurentiis, Warren Beatty, Saul Zaentz, George Lucas, Norman Jewison, Walter Mirisch, Steven Spielberg presenting this year’s Thalberg Award to John Calley, who was unable to attend the 2009 Governors Awards ceremony in the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland on Saturday, November 14.

Honorary Award recipient Roger Corman, the producer-director of numerous low-budget films including Attack of the Crab Monsters, Carnival Rock, Bloody Mama, and House of Usher

Honorary Award recipient Gordon Willis, the cinematographer of classics such as The Godfather, Annie Hall, and Manhattan, with Jeff Bridges, one of the stars of Bad Company, a 1972 Western shot by Willis
Richard Harbaugh (Willis/Bridges, group photo), Matt Petit (Corman) / ©A.M.P.A.S.
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Oscar’s Comeback Nominees

Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream (top); Roman Polanski, Adrien Brody in The Pianist (middle); Diane Lane in Unfaithful (bottom)

Since the 1960s, nearly every year has had at least one Oscar comeback in the acting/directing categories. Some were veterans getting their first chance at the Oscars; others were Oscar veterans getting their first nod in years.
Below are a few examples in the last 10 years. As per this list, Oscar’s comeback veterans hardly ever win.

2005
William Hurt, nominated as best supporting actor for A History of Violence. Hurt has three previous best actor nominations; the last one in 1987 was for Broadcast News. He won in 1985 for Kiss of [...]

THE CONTENDER – Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges

The Contender (2000)
Direction and screenplay: Rod Lurie
Cast: Joan Allen, Gary Oldman, Jeff Bridges, Christian Slater, Sam Elliott, William L. Petersen, Saul Rubinek, Philip Baker Hall, Robin Thomas, Mike Binder, Mariel Hemingway, Kathryn Morris, Kristen Shaw
 

 
THE POLITICIANS’ HOUR
"Principles only mean anything when we stick by them when they’re inconvenient," says Senator Laine Hanson (Joan Allen) in Rod Lurie’s political thriller The Contender. She should know. In that film, the poor Democratic senator is grilled by a Republican inquisitor with a bad hairdo (a venom-spitting Gary Oldman) who wants to prevent at all costs her being confirmed as the next Vice President of the United States. Even if that means destroying Hanson’s political career by making public the senator’s alleged participation [...]

San Sebastián Film Festival 2004

This year, the San Sebastián Film Festival will present a retrospective dedicated to Woody Allen, whose Melinda and Melinda (above, with Will Ferrell and Radha Mitchell) will have its world premiere on opening night. American actors Jeff Bridges and Annette Bening, for their part, will be honored with lifetime achievement awards.
The festival, which takes place on Spain’s Basque coast, is currently being used as a launching pad for movies made in Latin America via its fifteen-film sidebar Horizontes Latinos.
The 52nd edition of the San Sebastián Film Festival kicks off on September 17; nine days later, a jury headed by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa will give out the Golden Shell to one [...]