The 26th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) which runs January 2 to 12, 2015, will present awards to David Oyelowo, Richard Linklater, Julianne Moore, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Redmayne, J.K. Simmons, Reese Witherspoon and the cast of The Imitation Game. Hosted by Mary Hart, the Awards Gala will be held Saturday, January 3, 2015, at the Palm Springs Convention Center.
David Oyelowo
David Oyelowo will be presented with the Breakthrough Performance Award, for his critically acclaimed performance as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Ava DuVernay’s Selma. Selma is described as the story of a movement. The film chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement. Director Ava DuVernay’s Selma tells the story of how the revered leader and visionary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) and his brothers and sisters in the movement prompted change that forever altered history. The Paramount Pictures film is directed by Ava DuVernay and stars Oyelowo, Wilkinson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Alessandro Nivola, Giovanni Ribisi, Common, Carmen Ejogo, Lorraine Toussaint, with Tim Roth and Oprah Winfrey, who also serves as a producer.
In addition to Selma, David Oyelowo appeared in several other films this year including A Most Violent Year, Interstellar, and Default. His other credits include Lee Daniel’s The Butler, Lincoln, The Middle of Nowhere, Jack Reacher, The Paperboy, Complicit, Red Tails, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Help, 96 Minutes, The Last King of Scotland, among many others. His upcoming film projects are Captive, Nightingale, Nina and Five Nights in Maine.
The Imitation Game
The Festival will present its Ensemble Performance Award to the film The Imitation Game. The award will honor the film’s cast, which includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Charles Dance and Mark Strong.
During the winter of 1952, British authorities entered the home of mathematician, cryptanalyst and war hero Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) to investigate a reported burglary. They instead ended up arresting Turing himself on charges of ‘gross indecency’, an accusation that would lead to his devastating conviction for the criminal offense of homosexuality – little did officials know, they were actually incriminating the pioneer of modern-day computing. Famously leading a motley group of scholars, linguists, chess champions and intelligence officers, he was credited with cracking the so-called unbreakable codes of Germany’s World War II Enigma machine. An intense and haunting portrayal of a brilliant, complicated man, The Imitation Game follows a genius who under nail-biting pressure helped to shorten the war and, in turn, save thousands of lives. The Weinstein Company film is directed by Morten Tyldum with a screenplay by Graham Moore.
Reese Witherspoon
Academy Award® winning actress Reese Witherspoon will be presented with the Chairman’s Award for Wild. In Wild, director Jean-Marc Vallée, Witherspoon and Academy Award nominated screenwriter Nick Hornby bring bestselling author Cheryl Strayed’s extraordinary adventure to the screen. After years of reckless behavior, a heroin addiction and the destruction of her marriage, Strayed makes a rash decision. Haunted by memories of her mother Bobbi (Academy Award nominee Laura Dern) and with absolutely no experience, she sets out to hike more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail all on her own. Wildpowerfully reveals her terrors and pleasures –as she forges ahead on a journey that maddens, strengthens, and ultimately heals her. Fox Searchlight Pictures presents, a Pacific Standard production,Wild starring Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Michiel Huisman, Gaby Hoffmann, Kevin Rankin, W. Earl Brown, Mo McRae, Keene McRae. In addition to starring in Wild, Witherspoon also produced the film through her Pacific Standard Films banner, optioning the rights to Strayed’s memoir prior to its release.
This year, in addition to Wild, Reese Witherspoon appeared in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice and Philippe Falardeau’s The Good Lie, and through her production banner Pacific Standard Films, set up the adaptation of the bestselling novel Gone Girl. Her other film credits include Mud, Water for Elephants,Election, Legally Blonde, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, Sweet Home Alabama, Vanity Fair, Pleasantville and The Man in the Moon. In 2006, her performance as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, earned her the Academy Award for ‘Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role,’ as well as the BAFTA Award, Golden Globe® Award, Screen Actors Guild Award™, New York Film Critics Award, Broadcast Film Critics Award, People’s Choice Award, along with eleven other awards.
Richard Linklater
Two-time Academy Award® nominated filmmaker Richard Linklater will be presented with the Sonny Bono Visionary Award. Linklater wrote, produced and directed Boyhood, a film about growing up as seen through the eyes of a boy named Mason (in a breakthrough performance by Ellar Coltrane), who literally grows up on screen before our eyes. Starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason’s parents, and Lorelei Linklater as his sister Samantha, Boyhood charts the rocky terrain of childhood, parenting and growing up. Snapshots of adolescence from road trips and family dinners, to birthdays and graduations, and all the moments in between are set to a soundtrack spanning the years with music from Coldplay, Paul McCartney and Arcade Fire. The film, which was produced by Linklater, Cathleen Sutherland, Jonathan Sehring and John Sloss, was released by IFC Films.
Linklater’s list of film credits include Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, Waking Life, Tape,School of Rock, Before Sunset (which earned him an Academy Award® nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay), A Scanner Darkly, Bernie, and Before Midnight (which earned him a second Academy Award® nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay). Linklater also serves as the Artistic Director for the Austin Film Society, which he founded in 1985.
Rosamund Pike
Rosamund Pike will be presented with the Breakthrough Performance Award, Actress. From the tour de force thriller that became a bestselling must-read comes David Fincher’s screen version of Gone Girl, a wild ride through our modern media culture and down into the deep, dark fault lines of an American marriage – in all its unreliable promises, inescapable deceits and pitch-black comedy. The screenplay is by Gillian Flynn based upon her novel. The Twentieth Century Fox film stars Ben Affleck with Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry.
Rosamund Pike was nominated for a 2011 London Critics’ Circle Award for “British Actress in a Supporting Role” for her role in Made in Dagenham. For Barney’s Version Pike earned a 2011 London Critics’ Circle Award for “British Actress of the Year” and a Genie Award nomination for best actress. Pike’s other film credits include An Education, The World’s End, Jack Reacher, Wrath of the Titans,Johnny English Reborn, The Big Year, Women in Love, The Libertine, Pride and Prejudice, Fracture, Fugitive Pieces, Surrogates, Burning Palms, What We Did on Our Holiday, Hector and the Search for Happiness, A Long Way Down and Die Another Day.
J.K. Simmons
J.K. Simmons will be presented with the Spotlight Award, Actor. In Whiplash, Andrew Neyman is an ambitious young jazz drummer, single-minded in his pursuit to rise to the top of his elite east coast music conservatory. Plagued by the failed writing career of his father, Andrew hungers day and night to become one of the greats. Terence Fletcher, an instructor equally known for his teaching talents as for his terrifying methods, leads the top jazz ensemble in the school. Fletcher discovers Andrew and transfers the aspiring drummer into his band, forever changing the young man’s life. Andrew’s passion to achieve perfection quickly spirals into obsession, as his ruthless teacher continues to push him to the brink of both his ability—and his sanity. Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, the Sony Pictures Classics film stars Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons.
J.K. Simmons has appeared in diverse projects spanning motion pictures, television and the stage on and off Broadway. His motion picture credits include Sam Raimi’s Spider Man trilogy, Hidalgo, The Ladykillers, The Mexican, Off the Map, For Love of the Game, The Gift, Thank You for Smoking,Rendition, Burn After Reading, Juno, The Words, The Music Never Stopped, Jennifer’s Body, Extract, The Vicious Kind, I Love You Man, Beginner’s Guide to Endings, Contraband, Up in the Air, Jobs, Labor Day. His upcoming projects include The Reluctant Professor opposite Hugh Grant and Marisa Tomei, Gillian Raimi’s next feature Murder of a Cat and Jeremy Sisto’s feature Breakpoint.
Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore will be presented with the Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actress. In her latest film Still Alice, Moore plays Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, and is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she received diagnosis of Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, Alice and her family find their bonds thoroughly tested. Her struggle to stay connected to who she once was is frightening, heartbreaking and inspiring. The Sony Pictures Classics film stars Moore, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Alec Baldwin, Hunter Parrish and is directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. The film is being released in New York and Los Angeles for a one-week qualifying run on December 5, 2014 and opens on January 16, 2015
Moore’s notable films include the remake of Carrie; Non-Stop; Crazy, Stupid, Love; The Kids Are All Right; A Single Man; The Forgotten; What Maisie Knew; The English Teacher; Laws Of Attraction; Chloe; 6 Souls; Blindness; Savage Grace; I’m Not There; Children Of Men; Hannibal; Jurassic Park: The Lost World; The Fugitive; Nine Months; Benny & Joon; The Hand That Rocks The Cradle; The End Of The Affair; Boogie Nights; Magnolia; Cookie’s Fortune; Short Cuts; Don Jon; Gus Van Sant’s re-make ofPsycho; Safe; Vanya On 42nd Street; Surviving Picasso; and The Big Lebowski. Moore will next be seen as President Alma Coin in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. Next year she will star in The Seventh Sondue out on February 6, 2015 and Maps To The Stars. She is currently in production on the indie drama Freeheld.
Eddie Redmayne
Eddie Redmayne will be presented with the Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actor, currently seen in In The Theory of Everything. The Theory of Everything is the extraordinary and uplifting story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, and of two people defying the steepest of odds through love. The Focus Features release, based on the memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, by Jane Hawking, is directed by Academy Award winner James Marsh (Man on Wire). The film stars Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, and David Thewlis.
Eddie Redmayne’s film credits include Les Misérables, My Week with Marilyn, Savage Grace, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Like Minds, The Yellow Handkerchief, The Other Boleyn Girl, and The Good Shepherd. His stage work includes Red – for which he won a Tony Award – Richard II, Now or Later, and The Goat or Who is Sylvia. His notable television credits include starring in the miniseries Birdsong, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Pillars of the Earth, and Elizabeth I. Redmayne was nominated for BAFTA’s Rising Star Award and he shared a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination with his fellow actors from Les Misérablesfor Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.