And a special thank you to “all the little awards”

Cate Blanchett meant well, she really did. But organisers of Saturday’s Palm Springs International Film Festival must have cringed when she thanked them for her feel-good Desert Palm Achievement Award. “Thank you for reminding all of us honoured tonight that, if we’re not nominated for any other award, not to feel like losers – we had a moment of glory.”
That is to say it ain’t the Oscars, but a nice little pat on the back anyway. These awards, handed out at the southern California desert resort on Saturday, are among the little-league multitudes wishing they were Oscars, nominees for which won’t even be announced until January 14.
They’re not Oscars, these little awards, but the dream of making a difference anyway. Harold Matzner of the Palm Springs International Film Society pointed out that, in the past three years, 28 of the Palm Springs honourees grabbed Oscar nominations. He didn’t say how many actually won an Oscar. Emcee Mary Hart surely didn’t help matters by referring to the Palm Spring bash as “ground zero for awards season”, invoking a nuclear wilderness.
Blanchett got her trophy for “Carol” and he co-star, Rooney Mara, received a Spotlight Award. They might well both be nominated for the best-actress Oscar.
    In Palm Springs they and the other honourees at least had a chance to practise speeches that might be delivered to the Oscar crowd. Matt Damon, winner of the Chairman’s Award for “The Martian”, instead put in an early pitch for his director on that movie, Ridley Scott. Scott has been nominated for an Oscar three times yet never won.
Johnny Depp also got an Achievement Award, his for “Black Mass”, and thanked his wife, Amber Heard, “for living with all these characters”.
The cast of “The Big Short” won the prize for ensemble acting. Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Jeremy Strong and Finn Wittrock were there. Carell explained, “Ryan Gosling is not here this evening, and as an ensemble we can all agree that we all hated Ryan Gosling.”
Kate Winslet handed a trophy to her “Steve Jobs” co-star to Michael Fassbender, who dutifully thanked screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle for the frenzied work. “I believe you have a movie that will stand the test of time,” he told them. “Unfortunate about the box-office figures, but thank god for ‘Jurassic World’!”

“Thrones” scribe bewitched

No pressure or anything, but George RR Martin, author of the books on which the massive hit TV series “Game of Thrones” is based, has missed the deadline for completing his latest novel, “The Winds of Winter”. It was supposed to be finished by Halloween, and then it was due on December 31.
Agence France-Presse reports that Martin admitted his fumble on his blog shortly after midnight on Friday. “You’re disappointed, and you’re not alone,” he typed, overcoming his writer’s block for at least a few moments. “But no one could possibly be more disappointed than me”.
    “Winds of Winter” is the sixth volume in the series “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Now that he’s blown the deadline for the second time, it will “most certainly” not be published before the sixth season of “Games of Thrones” airs on HBO in April, so there’s a chance, he acknowledged, that the show could get ahead of the novel. “How you want to handle that – hey, that’s up to you.”
It’s like a spear through the heart.