I obviously didn’t make it to Cinevegas this year but Indiewire reported this morning on the prizewinners. Kyle Patrick Alvarez‘s Easier With Practice, concerning a lonely-guy author who falls for a mysterious phone sex caller while on a road trip to promote his unpublished novel, won the feature competition Grand Jury Prize. (Who promotes unpublished novels?)

Writers Cory Knauf and Joseph McKelheer and director Robert Saitzyk won an Exceptional Artistic Achievement Award for Godspeed, a dramatic thriller “set in the lingering light of the Alaskan midnight sun,” per press notes. The doc award went to Douglas Tirola‘s em>All In: The Poker Movie.

Jessica Oreck‘s Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo won a Special Documentary Jury Prize for Artistic Vision. Destin Daniel‘s Short Term 12 won the CineVegas Short Film Jury Prize . Justin Nowell‘s Acting for the Camera won a special Grand Jury Prize in Directing.

No more beating around the Year One bush. It opens Friday and it’s time to deal with it. Harold Ramis‘s animal-skins comedy preems tonight in Manhattan; the local all-media showing is on Wednesday. I was told by a semi-trusted source a while back that it’s “staggering.” That could be an okay thing if that’s the case. You’re supposed to feel a bit giddy and off-balance after seeing a comedy.

The curious thing about the trailer is how Jack Black and Michael Cera seem to start out as cavemen and then time-travel a few thousand years into a kind of Romanesque Fellini Satyricon realm. How does that work, I wonder?

Twelve hours ago CNET News’ Daniel Terdiman reported that ‘as the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran — thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their anger at perceived electoral irregularities — an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: ‘CNNFail.’

“Even as Twitter became the best source for rapid-fire news developments from the front lines of the riots in Tehran, a growing number of users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN, a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East.

“For most of Saturday, CNN.com had no stories about the massive protests on behalf of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was reported by the Iranian government to have lost to the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The widespread street clashes — nearly unheard of in the tightly controlled Iran — reflected popular belief that the election had been rigged, a sentiment that was even echoed, to some extent, by the U.S. government Saturday.

“‘The Obama administration is determined to press on with efforts to engage the Iranian government,’ the New York Times cited senior officials as having said Saturday, ‘despite misgivings about irregularities in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.’

“Yet even as word of the urban strife, seemingly led by those posting to Twitter, spread next around the world on news networks like the BBC, NPR, and the Times, CNN remained mostly mute. Even when the network’s Internet site finally posted a story late Saturday, the network’s first ‘story highlight’ was, ‘Ahmadinejad plans rally after winning second presidential term.'”

“If you can’t shove some real reform down the [Republican’s] throats now, when? Obama needs to start putting it on the line and fight the banks, the energy companies and the health care industry. What he needs in his personality is a little George Bush. Obama needs that some of that smug insufferable swagger that says ‘suck on it, America.’ [He] needs more audacity.”

Criterion’s Bluray of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal comes out Tuesday. “Love is the blackest of all plagues…if one could die of it, there would be some pleasure in love, but you don’t die of it.”

…with the sounds of chanting crowds and screaming women and the whup of billy clubs and the roar of burning buses. It’s where the action is, Anger Central, the flames of freedom flashing. And yet Americans, this afternoon, don’t seem to be paying all that much attention. Not as far as I can sense. I’m detecting more interest in the Yankee-Met game going on right now. It’s Sunday, bro…chill. The Hangover is #1 again. Zach Galifianakis!

Here‘s N.Y. Times reporter Roger Cohen discussing the suspicious aspects of Iran’s contested election.

In a review of Sony Home Video’s “The Jack Lemmon Collection,” a DVD package of five Columbia-produced films, N.Y. Times columnist Dave Kehr summarizes the “recurring predicament” of Lemmon’s screen characters as “that of the desperate conformist who ultimately discovers that conformity comes at too high a price.”

Very nice. Exactly. Kehr’s description is so clean that I’m envious. I’ve also begun to wonder how many other name-brand actors have experienced the same recurring predicament time and again? Actors and actresses who are so well known for a particular personality and character-type that screenwriters have adapted and wound up writing the same kind of story for this actor/actress, over and over?

How, for example, would one describe the recurring predicament of the classic Clint Eastwood character? “That of a low-key, steely-mannered nonconformist who tries to just get along, is challenged by ne’er do wells, and is always pushed into settling his scores by violent means.”

Jim Carrey? “That of an anxious but free-spirited eccentric who finds that expressing a heretofore suppressed side to his personality or experimenting with alternate values is fun for a while but ultimately makes things worse.”

Julia Roberts in the ’90s? “That of a spirited, independent-minded single gal who initially tries to breeze or arm’s-length her way through a relationship (or an adventure of some kind involving an attractive guy), only to eventually fall in love and put her serious emotional cards on the table.”

Seth Rogen? “That of an extremely bright but immature slacker-stoner who’s constantly being challenged by life’s complications to crawl out of his pot-smoking, lay-around conch shell and become an active, reality-facing, decision-making adult.”

Jeffrey Wells? “That of an enterprising and impassioned movie columnist whose daily opinions and musings are constantly challenged and sometimes belittled by internet trolls, this forcing a daily metaphorical shoot-out on Main Street with one or more of these hecklers.”

Shia LeBouf? “That of a plucky and somewhat irresponsible young guy trying to have fun and chase girls, only to be thrust into super-threatening situations involving supernatural life forms that force him to put away young-guy things and stand up and be a man.”

All interesting characters are defined by the three Ds — desire, deception and discovery.

“Security officials and riot police engaged in violent clashes with demonstrators in Tehran today in what one reporter called an ‘unprecedented scene’ in Iran in recent years,” reports a HuffPost account. “NBC producer Ali Arouzi described the events on Saturday: ‘What started off as a small rally outside a pro-reformist newspaper swelled into a massive crowd of people chanting, ‘Death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad!’

Many or most pre-election polls favored pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, President Ahmadinejad‘s opponent who leads a powerful youth-driven movement, to win the election by a healthy margin. The general worldwide belief in every corner of the universe is that Ahmadinejad flat-out stole the election.

“A small amount of police pushing the crowd back turned into huge riot police in armored gear and motor bikes beating all the young students here with batons, knocking them back. The students responded by throwing stones, which the police then threw back. Now the police are coming off all the heart streets and main streets to try and disperse the crowd.”

Several injuries were reported after police officers hit protesters with batons. Witnesses said some demonstrators appeared to have been arrested. Black-clad police also gathered around key government buildings and mobile phone text messaging was blocked in an apparent attempt to stifle one of the main communication tools by Mousavi’s movement.

Mousavi “urged his supporters to resist a “governance of lie and dictatorship.’

“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday that the United States hopes the outcome of Iran’s election reflects the “genuine will and desire” of its people, and that she will continue to monitor events as they unfold.Ahmadinejad has the apparent backing of the ruling theocracy, which holds near-total power and would have the ability to put the election results into a temporary limbo.

Mousavi “had not made a public address or issued messages since declaring himself the true victor moments after polls closed and accusing authorities of ‘manipulating’ the vote.

“‘I’m warning that I won’t surrender to this manipulation,” Mousavi said through on the web today. “The outcome of what we’ve seen from the performance of officials…is nothing but shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran sacred system and governance of lie and dictatorship.'”

DVD Beaver frame capture from Universal Home Video’s Field of Dreams Blu-ray, which apparently is somewhere between okay and so-so looking. “More grain is visible and the hi-def visuals definitely export a texture that is not present in the DVD releases,” writes Gary Tooze. But I love the ebbing twilight atmosphere in this still. So few films have been willing to run with poetic concepts.

Food, Inc. (now at the Film Forum) is a stirring film, all right. It makes you never want to eat anything other than organic fruit and vegetables ever again. It quite rightly raises suspicions that poisons are coursing through your system. And let’s face it — if you’re any kind of meat-eater or frequenter of fast-food joints, they probably are. On top of which you’re probably a bit more of a porker than you should be. Don’t think corporate America isn’t down with that.

Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner and I talked things over for about 25 minutes yesterday. Here‘s the mp3.

Fatty carcinogen corporate food has been a part of the landscape for only about 30 years or so. I can remember when people generally used to be in shape in the ’60s and ’70s. We’ve since become a nation of carcinogenic seal lions. 64% of the U.S. is overweight, and a large portion of this group is flat-out obese. Young kids (even toddlers) are obese everywhere you look.

The victims, obviously, are the middle and lower-middle classes, who always eat the cheapest and worst food around. The fat and sugar and chemical levels in mass fast foods are appalling. That’s not an accident — it’s what the corporate food barons want. They’ve been living high off the hog from the profits for so long, and it’s hard to say no once you get used to a fatness in all its forms.

I love this David Edelstein quote in New York: “I gave up the thought of ‘reviewing’ the documentary and decided, instead, to exhort you: See it. Bring your kids if you have them. Bring someone else’s if you don’t. The sheer scale of the movie is mind-blowing – it touches on every aspect of modern life. It’s the documentary equivalent of The Matrix.”