ScottFeinberg.com

By Rachel Bennett
Television Editor & Columnist

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As fans and colleagues still recover from the shock of Tony Scott’s apparent suicide on Aug. 19, many have not hesitated from praising the director’s long and illustrious career.

Beginning in 1969, Scott left his mark on the industry with a number of impressive films, including 1986’s Top Gun, 1993’s True Romance and 2010’s Unstoppable, which would be his last time in the director’s chair.

Not as many people know about Scott’s influence on television through Scott Free Productions, a production company he co-founded with his brother Ridley Scott. Along with films, the company has produced such TV series as CBS’s Numb3rs and The Good Wife as well as such miniseries as Starz’s The Pillars of the Earth and its sequel, ReelzChannel’s upcoming World Without End.

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On Saturday night, the 27th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival honored legendary thespian Christopher Plummer with its highest honor, the Modern Master Award, in front of a large crowd at Santa Barbara’s historic Arlington Theatre. (Previous recipients include Michael Douglas, Jodie Foster, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Diane Keaton,Sean Penn, Jeff Bridges, Peter Jackson, George Clooney, Will Smith, Cate Blanchett, Clint Eastwood, James Cameron, and Christopher Nolan.)

The 82-year-old was in fine form, answering questions, sharing stories, and telling jokes for over two hours before being presented with his statuette by Santa Barbara native Mike Mills, the writer-director of the 2011 dramedy Beginners, in which Plummer gave a colorful supporting performance (as Mills’ late father) that earned him a Critics’ Choice Award and Golden Globe Award this month and is widely expected to win him his first Oscar next month.

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By Sean O’Connell

Surfing around the Web in a post-Thanksgiving haze, I realize that any “War Horse”  embargoes surrounding Steven Spielberg’s potential Oscar contender are being laughed at  by Oscar bloggers who aren’t giving full on “reviews” but are making their opinions crystal  clear.

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By Sean O’Connell

The Oscar race appears to be jogging in place today as the world heads to the multiplex to watch the Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner in the latest “Twilight” installment, “Breaking Dawn, Part 1” (be  sure to read our positive review), but that doesn’t mean  there isn’t newsworthy happening in Academy land. Let’s  run through the top headlines of the day in a new “Awards  Alley Roundup.”

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The upcoming release of Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” (Sony Pictures Classics, 12/31, trailer) has inspired me to re-post a short piece that I wrote in 2008 about Leigh’s rather unusual approach to screenwriting. It provoked a lot of debate/discussion at the time, and I’d love to read your take on it in the comments section below.

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By Scott Feinberg (@ScottFeinberg)

Over the past two years, Twitter.com, the free micro-blogging service that first launched in March 2006, has became a full-blown cultural phenomenon. The first time most Americans heard of it was in April 2009, when the celebrity Ashton Kutcher (@APlusK) challenged the cable news network CNN (@CNNBrk) to a race to one million Followers — and won. Just two months later, when news broke of Michael Jackson’s sudden death, so many people were Tweeting their reactions that the site actually crashed. And, over the time since, millions more have begun employing Tweets of 140 or fewer characters as a way to share their thoughts and feelings with the world — including a considerable number of 2010 awards contenders and industry pundits. (See below for our directory of “must-Follows.”)

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• In Contention: Kris Tapley lands in Colorado and runs through the coming attractions of the 37th annual Telluride Film Festival, which gets underway today.

• Deadline Hollywood: Pete Hammond, meanwhile, passes along a few tips about which stars will be sneaking into Telluride unannounced in his debut piece for Nikki Finke.

• The Film Experience: Robert Anton goes long-form on French director Catherine Breillat, whose latest film “The Sleeping Beauty” will have its North American premiere at TIFF next week.

• The Projectionist: David Edelstein captures the essence of much of the awards season in a post that is short but oh so sweet.

• Hollywood-Elsewhere: Jeff Wells reports that the Boston premier of city native Ben Affleck’s newest film “The Town” will be held at Fenway Park. (Whether or not the film will be a big green monster for Warner Brothers remains to be seen.)

• The Wrap: Brent Lang wonders whether Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis‘s “Machete,” which premiered in Venice this week, can make a dent at the box office this Labor Day weekend.

• Cinematical: Pete Martin questions the importance of a film’s title when it comes to international audiences, noting recent examples of titles that “evolved” overseas.

Photo: Main street at the Telluride Film Festival. Credit: BonjourColorado.com

• In Contention: Kris Tapley breaks the news that veteran Oscarologist Pete Hammond has been swiped up by Nikki Finke, who recently profiled Pete’s wife on her site.
• Awards Daily: Ryan Adams pulls quotes from some of the first “Black Swan” reviews out of Venice — most raves — but inexplicably excludes the best, Todd McCarthy‘s description of it as “‘The Red Shoes’ on acid.”
• Little Gold Men: Mike Ryan pokes fun at the not-so-many American faces in the newly-released “The American.”
• Deadline.com: Mike Fleming reports that “Precious” cutie Paula Patton will join Tom Cruise for his fourth “Mission: Impossible.”
• HitFix: Greg Ellwood notes that dragons aren’t scared of toys, as demonstrated by a recent mailer.
• Roger Ebert’s Journal: Roger Ebert reviews Glenn Beck and “radical” conservatives — and appears to settle on half a star.
• Hollywood-Elsewhere: Jeff Wells finds the one TIFF party that journalists might fight to get out of.

Photo: Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman in a scene from “Black Swan.” Credit: Fox Searchlight.