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The Gotham Awards gala run by the Independent Feature Project (IFP) will be held in Brooklyn for the first time tonight, after 17 years spent bouncing around between Roseland, Hammerstein Ballroom and Chelsea Piers. This year the independent film awards will take place on the soundstage of Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Among the thousand-plus guests expected to attend are Javier Bardem, Sean Penn, Laura Linney, Uma Thurman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Brooklyn’s own John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, Marisa Tomei and Park Slope transplant Maggie Gyllenhaal.
The show honors the year’s best achievements in independent cinema, with nominees such as the Bob Dylan anti-biopic I’m Not There and Sean Penn’s Into the Wild. But more than basking in star-wattage, the event highlights scrappier, more obscure features with award categories like “Best Film Not Playing in a Theater Near You” and “Breakthrough Director”. Special tribute will also be paid to Bardem, whose performance in No Country for Old Men is phenomenal, as well as Mayor Bloomberg, for his commitment to advancing the city’s film industry.
Film critic Roger Ebert will be making a rare appearance to accept a tribute award from the IFP for “his championing of high-quality, undiscovered work.” Ebert has been out of the public eye for some time battling thyroid and salivary cancer; he’s now cancer free but unable to speak following a tracheotomy and the removal of part of his jaw. (He communicates by typing into a computer.) Because Ebert was in and out of the hospital for much of the past couple years, he was understandably late in announcing his favorite films of ’06. We're hoping that Ebert continues on his road to recovery with success - he's planning on undergoing surgery to reconstruct his voice box and jaw in future months.
The Gotham Awards will be broadcast on local cable station NYC TV on December 4th at 9pm and December 8th at 8pm.
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Into the Wild was a really great movie.
Javier Bardem looks kinda like Iggy Pop.
He sure was creepy! ...to say the least. Ha.
Ebert looks like a freak.
Ebert does look terrible, but that's what happens when you have your jaw removed. It makes me so sad, because he's truly a great person. You may not agree with his criticism, but he's helped force people to think about films a little more.
Bardem's performance in "No Country" was one of the most chilling I've seen in a long time. He was thousands of times scarier than any stupid "horror" movie villain.
Old school film criticism dies with Ebert, unless you consider Andrew Sarris relevant.
Watching Siskel and Ebert as a kid helped me realize that there was more to movies than entertainment pablum. It's something that turned me from a moviegoer to a movie appreciator and true fan of the medium. I hope Ebert's doing well and his condition continues to improve.
Ebert doesn't look that bad to me. He looks to be in good spirits.
I come he comes back, BTW. Good luck, Roger!
Gregoire, I happen to love Andrew Sarris. And may I say it kills me that Richard Roeper is in Gene Siskel's chair at the balcony? GUH.
Dick Groeper is an arrogant dipshit. He doesn't love the movies like siskel did - he's just waiting for his chance to move from chicago and have his own show in ny or la where he talks about what a great guy he is.
never forget, Ebert also co-wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
I wish people with cancer would not go out in public. Let me feel bad for you in my own way. don't rub it in! also it makes me nauseous to see him looking like a 3 day old bloated corpse.
"babyhitler" or perhaps "freddyhere" or whoever the hell you are, I wish your hateful presence wouldn't frequent decent blogs like this. Your very words make me nauseous. I can't imagine what a picture of you would do. Roger Ebert, on the other hand, appears to be a courageous and great person, whose disease could never make him as ugly and diseased as your spirit apparently is.
In the same vein, Jen, why are you bothering to answer the hateful spew of somebody with an alias as childish as "HughGass" and an avatar of a woman fellating someone in a wheelchair?
"it's my party and it FREAKS ME OUT"
ebert hated bladerunner. hated 2001 a space oddyssey. hated fight club. How is this guy contributing to films?
Sounds good to me. I didn't care for any of those films, either. I didn't recognize Ebert without his glasses and with that trache bandage. Hopefully, he'll be able to get reconstructive surgery, but it doesn't look promising with his precarious condition.