On April, 13, 2009, the Georges 2009 ceremony took place in a Moscow club IKRA. More than 300 guests visited the event, and more than 1500 viewers watched the web-cast at the Corbina.TV site. Among ordinary viewers-bloggers there were journalists, representatives of film distributors and Moscow cinemas, and also the special guests — makers of The Inhabited Island movie, at the ceremony.
The ceremony opened with introducing the honourable life-long laureate of the awards — Johnny Depp. As mister Depp had won in the category the Best Foreign Actor with envious persistence every year, we decided to make Johnny Simply the Best forever and to take his candidature out of the voting.
Before the main winners there were representatives of the Volga distributor company on the stage, who raffled off several posters with Mickey Rourke’s autograph and introduced a horrible zombie-fascist. He gave prizes and scared sensitive ladies, who did not know this character represented a new movie Dead Snow (Død snø). The publisher of the reborn russian edition of the Empire magazine Dmitry Golubnichiy calmed the audience a little by raffling five annual subscriptions of the edition.
The Best Foreign Actor and Actress became Heath Ledger and Meryl Streep. The awards organizers informed the Ledger’s posthumous prize would be sent to his parents to Australia, and the Meryl’s prize — to her agent in New-York.
For other foreign nominations the awards were received by the representatives of film distributors, who in response showed to the bloggers several exclusive promos from the upcoming movies of 2009. Famous actors and directors presented the awards. For example, the prize for the Best Animated Movie was presented by the Cannes Golden Palm winner and laureate of four Nika Awards — a famous director-animator Garri Bardin. “I congratulate you, you are free people,” said Garri Bardin from the stage to the bloggers, “In our time there was nothing, we were deprived of Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. Now everything is available to you — save this freedom!” The prize for WALL•E from the hands of Bardin was received by the Internet-marketing manager of The Walt Disney Company CIS Nikolay Zeinikov. He showed an exclusive episode from the Pixar and Disney animated movie Up and a fragment from The Princess and the Frog to the bloggers.
Pyotr Fyodorov, who played Guy Gaal in The Inhabited Island, was one of the most popular stars of the night. He willingly posed for photographs with fans, and from the stage he said that the Russia 88 movie with his participation — a docudrama on neofascism in Russia — finally had received a distribution certificate. Pyotr also confessed he had a dream to play a real villain in a movie, and he impersonated Colin Farrell, who he was actively compared with at that time, very convincingly. Fyodorov presented the prize to the Paradise company for the Best Independent Movie — In Bruges. The company’s manager for film distribution Natalya Pavlova and PR-director Elena Solovyova thanked bloggers for choosing their movie and showed a teaser of the Planet 51 animated film.
Before giving the award the director Pavel Sanayev presented his movie Hooked, the work fragment of which stirred interest of not only ordinary viewers, but also of famous guests. Pavel offered to consider this a start of the film’s PR-company in the web and said that exactly the bloggers would write about the movie at the site. After demonstration of the promo Sanayev gave the prize to Karo Premiere company for the Best Blockbuster Movie — it was The Dark Knight. The company’s manager for film distribution Roman Isayev in response pleased the audience with the promo of the Guy Ritchie’s movie Sherlock Holmes.
The producer of the Hipsters movie Vadim Goryainov went up to the stage two times — he received the award from the hands of Yuliya Snigir for the Best Russian Movie, and he had to take the rap for Sergey Garmash, who was absent on reasonable excuses. Garmash was named the Best Russian Actor by the bloggers. Sergey was filming, and the actor Mikhail Evlanov, who presented the award, promised to pass the prize to his colleague. “Pity, I can show you nothing,” repented Vadim Goryainov at that time, “But in the next time, I hope, we will definitely provide you with something exclusive!” Chulpan Khamatova was named the Best Russian Actress already for the second time, — but the actress said she was occupied and was absent at the ceremony. She received her matryoshka several days later during her theatre tour in Saint-Petersburg.
The director of The Inhabited Island movie Fyodor Bondarchuk was the last to go up to the stage. The first part of his dilogy was awarded by the bloggers as Most Discussed Movie in the Runet. Since the beginning of 2009 there had been real fights because of Vasiliy Stepanov’s smile, the pink tank and the director’s view of the Strugatsky brothers’ world in the Internet. The Inhabited Island had led for a long time in blogs and forums in a number of discussions, that is why the organizers of the awards established a special prize for it. Fyodor Bondarchuk reminded once more that he did not spend time in the Internet, but, nevertheless, he voiced the number of sites closed for free-sharing of the movie. And he promised to do this again after the release of the second part of the dilogy. Bondarchuk called the viewers to go to the cinemas more often and presented several minutes from his new movie.
Fyodor Bondarchuk marked the ceremony had a pleasant and lively atmosphere, and it was interesting for him to watch the audience, which vividly reacted to the exclusive stuff from the film distributors. Pyotr Fyodorov underlined the Georges Awards was the reflection of a very serious Internet-movement, in the development of which one would like to participate.