Jessica Chastain, Howard Shore Earn Palm Springs Festival Awards

The final two honorees have been announced for the upcoming 23rd Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. Jessica Chastain has been chosen as the Spotlight Award winner and composer Howard Shore is the 2012 Frederick Loewe Music Award winner, as revealed today by the PSIFF. Chastain and Shore will join previously announced award winners George Clooney, Glenn Close, Stephen Daldry, Michel Hazanavicius, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Octavia Spencer, and Michelle Williams at the January 7, 2012 gala in Palm Springs.
 
Chastain earned the Spotlight Award, which “honors an actor or actress for their extraordinary performances in the current cinematic year,” for her roles in The Help, The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, The Debt and Coriolanus.
 
“Through a series of virtuoso performances, Jessica Chastain has established herself as one of the cinema’s most versatile and most sought after young actresses,” stated Festival Chairman Harold Matzner. “In The Help, Chastain portrays a woman, emotionally paralyzed by a secret she is keeping from her socially prominent husband. She also gave outstanding performances in this year’s films The Tree of Life, Take Shelter and Coriolanus. In addition to these roles, her performance in The Debt as an undercover Mossad agent on the hunt for a Nazi war criminal exudes the strength of character needed to carry out her mission. To this actress, who captivates audiences with her adroit talents, the Palm Springs International Film Festival is honored to present the 2012 Spotlight Award to Jessica Chastain.”
 
This is the second time composer Shore has been chosen to receive the Frederick Loewe Music Award (he picked up the same honor in 2005 for The Aviator). This time, the PSIFF is honoring his work on Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.
 
“Howard Shore is a master composer who has consistently delighted audiences of the more than 80 films that he has scored,” stated Matzner. “In Hugo, the labyrinthine setting of a Paris railway station, where a young boy lives alone, doing what he must to survive, and the discovery of an aging filmmaker gifted with a second chance provide the perfect inspiration for Shore’s haunting score. He has received universal acclaim for this effort, with his compositions as dramatic and innovative as the 3-D in which Hugo was filmed. To this artist of unsurpassed and boundless talent, the Palm Springs International Film Festival is honored to present the 2012 Frederick Loewe Music Award to Howard Shore.”
 
The Palm Springs International Film Festival runs January 5-16.
 
Source: Palm Springs International Film Festival – December 28, 2011