Toronto —
After last year's successful launch into the television orbit and a safe return to Earth, The Spaceys are all systems go for a second mission.
This Sunday night, CHUM Television presents the second annual Spacey Awards on its sci-fi specialty channel Space: The Imagination Station.
In the best movie category, for example, will it be Tolkien or Tarantino? Who will prove to be the best movie villain? Agent Smith of the Matrix movies or Go Go Yubari from Kill Bill: Vol. 1? Will Return of the King's Battle of Pelennor Fields prove to be the best action sequence, beating out The Matrix Reloaded's Freeway Chase or Kill Bill's The Bride and Crazy 88? In the best-horror-villain category, Freddy and Jason are both squaring off again from, naturally, Freddy vs. Jason.
"You got your diehard Friday the 13th fans and your diehard Nightmare on Elm Street fans," says Spaceys' on-camera host Jonathan Llyr. "Now the fans get to duke it out just like the characters did in the movie."
While it still promises to be an awards show with "no seats, no sets, no red carpet" there will be changes, including more guests and more travel.
"We did a post-mortem after last year and we said 'Hey, let's do it again, it seems to have really twigged the interest of the people,"' says Paul Gratton, Space's vice-president and general manager, who was impressed with both the ratings and the voting first time out.
Like last year, half of the 14 categories are selected by a Space committee, the other half by viewers who during March cast ballots online. Some categories were dropped — there's no favourite sci-fi "hottie," an award won last year by Jolene Blalock, T'pol of the Star Trek spinoff Enterprise — but they've added categories for best comic book adaptation movie and favourite video game.
"Video games are a huge part of the genre these days, video games make more money than movies," says Llyr. "It's kinda nice to be able to play with the categories a little bit to reflect the trends of the time and not be pigeonholed."
But for these awards, the celebrities and recipients don't come to the show, the show goes to them.
Spacey cameras, for example, visited London to present a special lifetime achievement award to pioneer special-effects craftsman Ray Harryhausen who, through his unique animation techniques, brought creatures to life in such fantasy classics as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts.
Gratton says Harryhausen was the inspiration for any filmmaker working in F/X movies today.
"He basically feels that his particular skill base, which is stop motion, has largely become outdated thanks to CGI effects, but all of us who grew up loving these movies were essentially entranced by Ray Harryhausen's magic."
One Harryhausen admirer, Lord of the Rings maestro Peter Jackson, will also be getting a special achievement award, although the Spaceys didn't journey to New Zealand to hand it over.
"Jackson actually sent us stuff from New Zealand he had his own people shoot," says Llyr who notes the Kiwi filmmaker is also up for two other awards on the show.
Since The Two Towers was the big Spacey winner last year, it's probably a safe bet that it will be Return of the King all the way this time out.
"Well you never know, but you look at the trends this year and it's a pretty incredible achievement," Llyr says with a sly grin.
"This is just so fantastic," declared Jackson in his pre-recorded acceptance for the special achievement award, in which he also assumed the space-alien design of the trophy was the "chrome guy" from Terminator 2.
"I'm pleased that this genre that we love, science fiction and fantasy, in some way has been legitimized in the eyes of many people," he added, revealing that he planned to place the award near his computer where he could look at it every day.
Viewers will also be taken to Oregon and the home of that favourite of cult actors Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead, Bubba Ho-Tep). Other guest appearances include Ron Perlman (Hellboy) and David Prowse (Darth Vader) but not, apparently, Kevin Spacey, despite the fact he did star in the sci-fi movie K-PAX.
"He's more than welcome to come aboard and hand out an award any time," says Gratton. "And if he can do a slightly better sci-fi/fantasy film than that one, we'll be happy to honour his contributions to the genre!"
