Writers Guild Of America Awards 2008
The 61st Writers Guild of America Awards honored the best film, television, and videogame writers of 2008. Winners were announced on February 7, 2009. Nominees Names in bold denote the winners. Film Best Adapted Screenplay *'' The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'' – Eric Roth (screenplay), Eric Roth and Robin Swicord (story); F. Scott Fitzgerald (author) *''The Dark Knight'' – Jonathan and Christopher Nolan (screenplay), Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer (story); Bob Kane and Bill Finger (creators) *''Doubt'' – John Patrick Shanley (screenplay and playwright) *'' Frost/Nixon'' – Peter Morgan (screenplay and playwright) *''Slumdog Millionaire'' – Simon Beaufoy (screenplay); Vikas Swarup (author) Best Original Screenplay *''Burn After Reading'' – Joel Coen and Ethan Coen *''Milk'' – Dustin Lance Black *''Vicky Cristina Barcelona'' – Woody Allen *'' The Visitor'' – Tom McCarthy *''The Wrestler'' – Robert Siegel B ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Writers Guild Of America, East
The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) is a labor union representing writers in film, television, radio, news, and online media. The Writers Guild of America, East is affiliated with the Writers Guild of America West. Together the guilds administer the Writers Guild of America Awards. It is an affiliate of the International Federation of Journalists, the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds, and the AFL–CIO. History WGAE had its beginnings in 1912, when the Authors' League of America (ALA) was formed by some 350 book and magazine authors, as well as dramatists. In 1921, this group split into two branches of the League: the Dramatists Guild of America for writers of stage and, later, radio drama and the Authors Guild (AG) for novelists and nonfiction book and magazine authors. That same year, the Screen Writers Guild came into existence in Hollywood, California, but was "little more than a social organization", according to the WGAe's website, until the Great Depre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Doubt (2008 Film)
''Doubt'' is a 2008 American drama film written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony Award-winning 2004 stage play '' Doubt: A Parable''. Produced by Scott Rudin, the film takes place in a Catholic elementary school named for St. Nicholas, led by Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep). Sister James (Amy Adams) tells Aloysius that Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) might be paying too much attention to the school's only black student, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster), thus leading to Aloysius investigating Flynn's behaviour. The film also features Viola Davis as Donald Miller's mother, Mrs. Miller, in her first notable role. The film premiered October 30, 2008, at the AFI Fest before being distributed by Miramax Films in limited release on December 12 and in wide release on December 25. Grossing $50.9 million against a budget of $20 million, the film received largely positive reviews from critics. Streep, Hoffman, Adams, and Davis were highly ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Visitor (2007 Drama Film)
''The Visitor'' is a 2007 American drama film written and directed by Tom McCarthy and produced by Michael London and Mary Jane Skalski. Executive producers were Jeff Skoll and Omar Amanat. The screenplay focuses on a lonely man in late middle age whose life changes when a chance encounter with an immigrant couple forces him to face issues relating to identity, immigration, and cross-cultural communication in post-9/11 New York City. For ''The Visitor'', McCarthy won the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, while Richard Jenkins was nominated for Best Actor at the 81st Academy Awards. Plot Walter Vale is a widowed Connecticut College economics professor who lives a fairly solitary existence. He fills his days by sometimes taking piano lessons in an effort to emulate his late wife, a classical concert pianist, and infrequently works on a new book. When he is asked to present a paper at an academic conference at New York University, he is not enthusiastic to make the tr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing material for television in the 1950s, mainly ''Your Show of Shows'' (1950–1954) working alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, and Neil Simon. He also published several books featuring short stories and wrote humor pieces for ''The New Yorker''. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian in Greenwich Village alongside Lenny Bruce, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, and Joan Rivers. There he developed a monologue style (rather than traditional jokes) and the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish. He released three comedy albums during the mid to late 1960s, earning a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album nomination for his 1964 comedy album entitled simply '' Woody Allen''. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked A ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vicky Cristina Barcelona
''Vicky Cristina Barcelona'' is a 2008 romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. The film stars Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson in lead roles. The plot centers on two American women, Vicky and Cristina, who spend a summer in Barcelona, where they meet an artist, Juan Antonio, who is attracted to both of them, while still enamored of his mentally and emotionally unstable ex-wife María Elena. The film was shot in Spain in Barcelona, Avilés, and Oviedo, and was Allen's fourth consecutive film shot outside the United States. ''Vicky Cristina Barcelona'' premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and then received a rolling worldwide general release that started on August 15, 2008, in the United States, and continued in various countries until its June 2009 release in Japan. The film emerged as a commercial success at the box office, becoming one of Allen's highest-grossing films. It received widespread critical acclaim upon ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dustin Lance Black
Dustin Lance Black (born June 10, 1974) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and LGBT rights activist. He is known for writing the film ''Milk (2008 American film), Milk'', for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2009. He has also subsequently written the screenplays for the film ''J. Edgar'' and the 2022 crime miniseries ''Under the Banner of Heaven (TV series), Under the Banner of Heaven''. Black is a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights and writer of ''8 (play), 8'', a staged reenactment of the Perry v. Schwarzenegger, federal trial that led to a federal court's overturn of California's California Proposition 8 (2008), Proposition 8. Early life Black's father Raul Garrison walked out on his polio-stricken mother, Roseanna, and his two brothers, Marcus Raul and Todd Bryant, when he was young. They grew up in a Mormon household, first in San Antonio, Texas, before moving to Salinas, California. Growing up surro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Milk (2008 American Film)
''Milk'' is a 2008 American biographical film based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black, the film stars Sean Penn as Milk and Josh Brolin as Dan White, a city supervisor, and Victor Garber as San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. Attempts to put Milk's life to film followed a 1984 documentary of his life and the aftermath of his assassination, titled ''The Times of Harvey Milk'', which was loosely based upon Randy Shilts's 1982 biography, ''The Mayor of Castro Street'' (the film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for 1984, and was awarded Special Jury Prize at the first Sundance Film Festival, among other awards). Various scripts were considered in the early 1990s, but projects fell through for different reasons, until 2007. Much of ''Milk'' was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Coen Brothers
Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957),State of Minnesota. ''Minnesota Birth Index, 1935–2002''. Minnesota Department of Health. collectively known as the Coen brothers (), are American filmmakers. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works include ''Raising Arizona'' (1987), ''Miller's Crossing'' (1990), ''Barton Fink'' (1991), '' Fargo'' (1996), ''The Big Lebowski'' (1998), ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' (2000), ''No Country for Old Men'' (2007), ''True Grit'' (2010), '' Inside Llewyn Davis'' (2013), and ''The Ballad of Buster Scruggs'' (2018). The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until ''The Ladykillers (2004 film), The Ladykillers'' (2004) Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate Billing (filmmaking), top billing for their screenplays while sharing editing credits under an alias, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Burn After Reading
''Burn After Reading'' is a 2008 black comedy spy film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows a recently jobless CIA analyst, Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) whose misplaced memoirs are found by a pair of dimwitted gym employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt). When they mistake the memoirs for classified government documents, they undergo a series of misadventures in an attempt to profit from their find. The film also stars George Clooney as a womanizing U.S. Marshal; Tilda Swinton as Katie Cox, the wife of Osbourne Cox; Richard Jenkins as the gym manager; and J. K. Simmons as a CIA supervisor. The film premiered on August 27, 2008, at the Venice Film Festival. It was released in the United States on September 12, 2008, and in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2008. It performed well at the box office, grossing over $163 million from its $37 million budget. Critical response was mostly positive, and the film received nominations at both the Gold ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vikas Swarup
Vikas Swarup (born 22 June 1961) is a retired Indian diplomat and writer. He retired from the Indian Foreign Service as the Secretary (West) at the Ministry of External Affairs, India on 30 June 2021 and has previously served as High Commissioner of India in Canada and has been the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs. He was best known as the author of the novel '' Q & A'', adapted in film as ''Slumdog Millionaire'', the winner of Best Film for the year 2009 at the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards and BAFTA Awards. Swarup joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1986 and served in Turkey, the United States, Ethiopia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Japan in various Indian diplomatic missions. His other novels are ''Six Suspects'' and ''The Accidental Apprentice''. In April 2015, he was appointed as the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs of India to head its Public Diplomacy divisions at New Delhi, succeeding Syed Akbaruddin. In D ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Simon Beaufoy
Simon Beaufoy (; born 26 December 1966) is a British screenwriter. Born in Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, he was educated at Malsis School in Cross Hills, Ermysted's Grammar School and Sedbergh School, he read English at St Peter's College, Oxford and graduated from Arts University Bournemouth. In 1997, he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for ''The Full Monty''. He went on to win the 2009 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for ''Slumdog Millionaire'' as well as winning a Golden Globe and a BAFTA award. Beaufoy has recently completed adaptations of ''The Raw Shark Texts'' by Steven Hall, ''Salmon Fishing in the Yemen'' by Paul Torday, and a new adaptation of ''The Full Monty'' as a stage play. In March 2014, Spanner Films announced that Beaufoy will be one of the writers for ''Undercovers'', a television drama series about the undercover police officers who spied on activists, and the women who unknowingly had long-term relationships and eve ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Slumdog Millionaire
''Slumdog Millionaire'' is a 2008 British drama film that is a loose adaptation of the novel '' Q & A'' (2005) by Indian author Vikas Swarup. It narrates the story of 18-year-old Jamal Malik from the Juhu slums of Mumbai. Starring Dev Patel as Jamal, and filmed in India, the film was directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and produced by Christian Colson, with Loveleen Tandan credited as co-director. As a contestant on '' Kaun Banega Crorepati'', an Indian-Hindi version of ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,'' Jamal surprises everyone by being able to answer every question correctly, winning . Accused of cheating, Jamal recounts his life story to the police, illustrating how he is able to answer each question correctly. After its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival and later screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and the London Film Festival, ''Slumdog Millionaire'' had a nationwide release in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2009, in Ind ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |