The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films has announced their nominations for the 35th annual Saturn Awards and True Blood and Anna Paquin have both been nominated. Established in 1872 by Dr. Donald Reed to "honor and recognize genre filmmaking", the ASFF&HF grew out of its origins within "The Count Dracula Society" which was focused on gothic literature, film and television. The first two recipients of the Saturn awards were William Marshall, Blakula, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse Five. The popularity of Star Wars brought attention to the Saturn awards taking it from being a small, intimate affair where award certificates were presented to a televised forum where a statuette is presented to the winners which continues to this day although the awards have not been broadcast past it's initial 3-year foray into television. Today the Saturn Awards have been licensed to the publisher of Cinescape Magazine, Mania Entertainment and they hope to return the award presentations to television. HBO's True Blood was nominated in the category of Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series and is up against Sci Fi's Battlestar Galactica, TNT's The Closer, Showtime's Dexter, TNT's Leverage, and Cartoon Network's Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In addition Anna Paquin was nominated for Best Actress in Television for her role as Sookie Stackhouse in HBO's True Blood with competition from Lena Headey for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (FOX), Jennifer Love Hewitt in The Ghost Whisperer (CBS), Evangeline Lilly for Lost (ABC), Mary Mcdonnell in Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi) and Kyra Sedgwick for The Closer (TNT) The nominees are picked from a the eligible pool that have been submitted by their respective studios in the preceding calendar year, in this case from January 1st to December 31st, 2008. The final list of 5-6 nominees per category are selected by the Academy Committee Leaders and approved by the Board of Directors followed by a somewhat odd procedure where a committee made up of fans, academics and film professionals decide who wins in each category except for Best Film which all members get to vote on. Membership is currently open to the public for a mere $140.00 which considering you get to view all the movies being considered with a friend, is an inexpensive yearly movie pass if you live in the LA area. Past winners include such distinguished TV shows as Star Trek: TNG, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, X-Files and Heroes. It was also the event that brought us the infamous "Rocket Man" as interpreted by William Shatner which is worth a view in and of itself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN3MGN899yE The ASFF&HF is currently led by Robert Holguin and this years awards will be on June 25th, 2009 in a location to be announced. SOURCE: Saturnawards.org (Photo credit: saturnawards.org) http://truebloodnet.com http://truebloodnet.com/community http://truebloodnet.com/forums
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