Hall of Fame Spotlight: Dustin Hoffman

At the first Cosmique Movie Awards, when all of the categories were for lifetime achievements, Dustin Hoffman was a surprise win for Best Actor of All Time, and the first inductee in the Best Actors Hall of Fame.

The prolific actor of such great films as All the President's Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, and Rain Man, competed against a number of other favorite actors, including Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, and Donald Sutherland. Grant and Stewart were inducted into the Hall of Fame at the second and third awards respectively.

Despite Hoffman's appeal to Cosmo voters and his ongoing acting career, his first award represents his sole nomination at the Cosmique Movie Awards.

Hall of Fame Spotlight: Katharine Hepburn

At our very first Cosmique Movie Awards in 2001, we chose to make every category a lifetime achievement award, with nominees available from any year. Three of those categories were intended to be Hall of Fame Awards, with new inductees added each year. We've already mentioned that The Wizard of Oz was inducted as the very first Best Films of All Time Hall of Famer.

The very first inductee into the Best Actresses of All Time Hall of Fame was the indomitable Katharine Hepburn. At the time, she had achieved more Academy Award nominations (twelve) than any other actress, a milestone subsequently surpassed by future Hall of Famer Meryl Streep.

At the first awards, Katharine was also nominated for Best Individual Performance by an Actress of All Time for her portrayal of Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, but lost to Rosalind Russell for her titular performance in Auntie Mame. The Lion in Winter was also nominated for Best One Liner or Camp Quote in Movie History for a line she utters: "Of course he has a knife - we all have knives. It's the twelfth century and we're all barbarians!"

Perhaps another sign of the Cosmo's love of Katharine can be gleaned from the 2004 supporting actress win by Cate Blanchett for her spot-on portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator. Blanchett also won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for the performance.

In her lifetime and even afterwards, Katharine Hepburn is one of the most celebrated actresses of all time. She's won four Academy Awards (twelve nominations), two BAFTA Awards (five nominations), an Emmy Award (five nominations), four Golden Globe nominations, the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, two Golden Laurel Awards (four nominations), two People's Choice Awards, an American Comedy Lifetime Achievement Award, and was named Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year in 1958.

Most popular Cosmo actor is ... Ian Somerhalder?

The most popular actor on the Cosmique Movie Awards website, based on keywords bringing people to the site and the most trafficked pages, isn't Hall of Fame winners like Katharine Hepburn or Cary Grant. It isn't frequent nominees like Cate Blanchett or Ian McKellan.

The most popular actor on the Cosmo site is Ian Somerhalder, nominated in 2002 for Actor's Character You Would Most Like to be Intimate With for his performance in The Rules of Attraction.

The film was a bit of a sleeper; the Cosmos only nominated it for one other award (Best Cinematography or Art Direction, no doubt for the split-screen scene that included James Van der Beek on the toilet). And it was Ian's sole nomination ever for the Cosmo Awards.

But now, following his short-lived role on Lost and his teen-favorite role on TV's The Vampire Diaries, he's riding a new wave of popularity that driving folks to our website, no doubt amongst many others.

For the record, Natalie Portman and Halle Barry are also very popular.

One more photo of Ian Somerhalder, this time from The Rules of Attraction:

The Wizard of Oz

As we introduce new readers to the Cosmique Movie Awards, we want to profile some of the big winners from the past.

Our first awards in 2001 we all Lifetime Achievement awards, and the top award for Best Film of All Time was also inducted into our Best Films Hall of Fame. The first winner, and inductee, went to The Wizard of Oz, the 1939 classic musical starring Judy Garland. Its success probably speaks volumes about the Cosmo voters.

The Wizard of Oz beat out a number of other great films, including All About Eve, Chinatown, A Letter to Three Wives, and Nashville. It was also nominated for three other lifetime achievement awards, winning all of them, including:

• Most Quotable Movie of All Time
• Best Movie Musical of All Time
• Best Film Villain of All Time (Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West)

The Best Movie Musical award was shared with Singin' in the Rain, while Best Film Villain was shared with both Glenn Close for Dangerous Liaisons and Anthony Hopkins for Silence of the Lambs.

Welcome to the Cosmique Movie Awards blog!

In 2001, a bunch of friends -- many who were part of the Cosmique Krewe of Colour, a private Mardi Gras krewe in the San Francisco Bay Area -- decided at an Academy Awards party to have our own movie awards. Ballots were handed out for attendees to vote on their favorite movies, performances, performers, characters, and movie scenes. As this was the inaugural year for the awards, we decided that a fair amount of catching up was needed, so the nominations that first year were open to films of all time, rather than those released that calendar year.

Categories ranged from the serious (like Best Movie of All Time) to the rediculous (like Most Surprising Performance by an Actor or Actress That You Never Thought Was Very Good, but They Really Surprised You With This Particularly Good Performance). We likened it to blending the gravitas of the Academy Awards with the irreverence of the MTV Movie Awards.

Subsequent years have focused on films released the previous calendar year (with the exception of a few lifetime achievement awards each year).

Since the first year, membership has grown to scores of members. The membership list is kept confidential and admission is by invitation only. Members of the Academy come from all walks of life, but share a certain sensibility. Most of the members (but not all) are in San Francisco. They are disproportionately (but by no means exclusively) gay, lesbian, or bisexual. They are primarily (though not completely) disassociated with the film industry, except as fans. Membership is restricted, but there are no membership fees. Members are not expected to see all of the potential or actual nominees, though many make a point of doing so. The Cosmos operate under the philosophy that what we choose to honor is as much about what draws us to the cinemas as it is about what we liked when we got there.

Each year, the Cosmique Movie Academy's Board of Governors selects the categories that will be used that year. This may include creating new categories or, in rare instances, retiring others. Each year, another film, actor, and actress is inducted into the Hall of Fame. In some years, additional lifetime achievement categories may also be offered from time to time, usually as a special one-time-only award. But most of the awards are dedicated to films and performances from the previous calendar year.

After the awards celebrating films from 2006, the awards went dormant for a time. We're back! We're ready to celebrate the films of 2010, so head out to the theater and keep notes! And we're hoping to recruit more like-minded voters.