Strange Days

The 13th Annual Hollywood Film Festival and Hollywood Awards, presented by Starz, have announced that director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Near Dark, Strange Days) will be honored with the "Hollywood Director Award."

Kathryn Bigelow recently directed the The Hurt Locker, a film that has received great acclaim. It stars Jeremy Renner, Brian Geraghty and Anthony Mackie in a riveting portrait of three members of the Army's elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad battling insurgents in Iraq. Bigelow's remarkable work has alternated between edgy and art-house fare (The Loveless, Near Dark, The Weight of Water) and action products (Point Break, Strange Days, K-19: The Widowmaker) throughout a highly regarded career spanning more than 25 years...

Actor Anthony Mackie asked his wife to FedEx his dignity back to him. The inexperienced Jordanian crew gave the actors real liquor for a fight scene (which wasn’t discovered until well into the shooting, thanks to the actors). And temperatures soared sometimes above 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Despite that, and shooting one million feet of film, director Kathryn Bigelow’s new action film The Hurt Locker, out June 26th, 2009 in theaters, is an awesome display of intensity and fireworks (read our review). Director Bigelow (Near Dark, Strange Days) and screenwriter writer Mark Boals talk to Pretty/Scary about working with actor Jeremy Renner on the newest action movie about the Iraq War and the men who diffuse bombs in the streets of Baghdad...