The Palm Springs International Film Festival held its annual Awards Gala on Saturday night, raising $1.3 million for the Palm Springs International Film Society, giving a moment in the spotlight for more than a dozen awards contenders, and leaving one big question in the minds of attendees:
Where's Mariah Carey when you need her?
Last year's gala provided one indelible moment: Carey, who was being honored for her performance in "Precious," launching into a disjointed, rambling speech that immediately became a YouTube sensation.
This year, there was no Carey to seize the spotlight. What was left was an awards presentation that PSIFF chairman Howard Matzner insisted ranked behind only the Oscars and the Golden Globes in the "aura of glamour" and amount of international press attention it attracted.
Unlike those events, though, the winners in Palm Springs are announced ahead of time – and instead of being chosen by a secret vote, they're the product of negotiations and jockeying between studios and publicists anxious to showcase their contenders in front of what one wag called "just another precinct," and a festival that needs big names to attract the town's moneyed elite to its annual fundraising event.
So "The Social Network" got an award for its ensemble cast, and "The King's Speech" and "Black Swan" got some visibility because Colin Firth (above, with Helen Mirren) and Natalie Portman (below) received the Desert Palm Achievement Awards for Actor and Actress, and "The Fighter" director David O. Russell was named Director of the Year – which didn't stop two other directors from also getting kudos, "127 Hours" helmer Danny Boyle receiving the Sonny Bono Visionary Award and actor/writer/director Ben Affleck taking home the Chairman's Award.
A hirstute Affleck joked about the name of that award, saying that he'd grown "a chairman's beard" for the occasion. But that's what happens at events like Palm Springs gala: categories are flexible, and it's always possible to squeeze in one more big star with one more award.
Other honorees included Jennifer Lawrence, Carey Mulligan, Javier Bardem, Robert Duvall and songwriter Diane Warren.
Timed only a week before Oscar ballots are due and situated in a desert resort city that has always had a sizeable entertainment community, the Palm Springs gala is taken seriously enough that, for instance, Danny Boyle flew in straight from London, where he's in rehearsals for a stage version of "Frankenstein" that he's directing at London's National Theater.
"I'm in theater mode, so it's hard to change my focus and move back into this world," he told theWrap at a party that followed the ceremony. "But Fox Searchlight has been so great with this movie that I had to come back for this."
As for the Gala itself, the lack of a wild-card like Carey made for a long and fairly staid but affectionate evening, where any qualms about the real motives behind the awards can be ignored because the people being saluted were all eminently worthy.
