Frankly, the Academy has no idea. Drive, a film I consider to be easily the best film of 2011, missed out on virtually any Oscar nominations at all, save a filler spot for Best Sound Editing (I mean, c’mon, when you’re up against a Transformers movie, what hope to you have?) – not even Albert Brooks’ nasty turn as a gangster in that film was given so much as a nod. Instead, Melissa McCarthy now becomes an Oscar nominee for her work in the female slanted comedy Bridesmaids. Really?

And so the frustrating spectacle of seeing truly great films miss out on the Oscar glow comes around again.

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Bob Anderson - 1922-2012

While he’s not a household name, everyone should know who Bob Anderson is. Anderson was the man working behind the scenes of some of cinemas great sword fights, from Star Wars, The Princess Bride, to The Lord Of The Rings and even Peter Jackson’s currently-in-production The Hobbit. Mr Anderson was the man under Vader’s mask whilst dueling with Obi Wan in the original Star Wars, Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back and Return of The Jedi, as well as choreographing the sword fighting sequences in films as diverse as Highlander, Barry Lyndon (for Stanley Kubrick), The Three Musketeers (1993, with Charlie Sheen and Keifer Sutherland), both recent Zorro films, and even the fencing sequence in Die Another Day. He also worked with the legendary Errol Flynn, on the film The Master Of Ballantrae. Chick-flick fans across the globe also need to remember that it was Bob who designed the amazing fight choreography in The Princess Pride. Up until his passing he was continuing to work, returning to Middle Earth for the Hobbit production, designing more fight sequences.

Among his on-screen appearances, he played a small role in the Doctor Who serial Enemy Of The World, and an Imperial Officer in The Empire Strikes Back.

Mr Anderson was 90.

In the hundred or so years since film was invented and turned into a multi-billion dollar industry, plenty of ink has been spilled over lists and articles about just who has been the best – the best director, the best actor, the best musician – like humanity can’t get enough out of figuring out the most superior of our own self-importance. The Hollywood awards season seems to last the entire year, with a multitude of industry-based awards shows dominating the blogosphere and newsprint each and every month, culminating in the very pinnacle of cinematic artistic achievement, The Academy Awards. Each year, golden gongs are handed out to those folks judged by others folks to be the best in their category at what they’ve done that year. Whether those awards are warranted or not isn’t the point of this article; here, we’re going to spotlight the very best of the best – the best Actors and Actresses, the best Directors, the best Films, even the best cinematic advances of the Modern Age. What do I mean by Modern Age, you ask. Simple. Hollywood’s boom times of the 30′s and 40′s, at least prior to the War, are known today as the Golden Age, and the three decades after that could be termed the Bronze Age – with a shift into color film, multi-channel stereo and the re-invention of the Hollywood “blockbuster” away from biblical epics and sweeping melodramatic romance. The 80′s, however, when you look at films produced at that time in a reflective mood, represents a shift both artistically and stylistically in the medium of film to such a degree that I think a new “age” of Hollywood could be coined: the Modern Age. An epoch of cinema between 1980 and 2010, 30 years of both massive successes, and epic fails. The Greatest of the Modern Age attempts to distill the best of the Modern Age into a series of opinion-based lists, and we hope you enjoy (if not disagree with) our work.

While stars of the bygone era, names like Shirley Temple, Burt Lancaster, Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth and others may have faded from the forefront of our social conscience, due mainly to the passing of time and the innocence of youth, a youth more obsessed with Justin Bieber than James Dean, the stars of the modern era have, and can, reach a global audience unlike any in history before now. Whereas Hollywood of the 30′s seemed like a fairytale time by today’s standards, nowadays, stars run their own shows and have such a social presence thanks to online media and saturation TV coverage, it’s impossible to not see them every day. Which begs the question: if the stars of today had lived back in the heyday of Hollywood, alongside the greats of cinema, who would be the biggest and the best? It’s like equating apples and oranges, I know, but I wanted to take a chance and try and sift through the smorgasbord of superstars getting about today and put together a definitive list of the ten best actors and actresses living today. I realize it’s a mission fraught with danger and controversy, but here at fernbyfilms.com, we’re all about danger and controversy. Okay, perhaps not exactly all about it, but we don’t mind stoking the flames of fan passion from time to time.

Ergo, we’ve come up with a list of actors which we consider to be the greatest cinema legends since 1980.The criteria for inclusion isn’t that stringent: each actor must have performed in a minimum 5 films since 1980, been nominated for and/or won an Oscar, and have a substantial following from the general public. The majority of their major work must be post-1980.

The Modern Age. The Facebook Age. Call it what you will, it’s a Top 10 list and it’s gonna kick up some mud!

Click here to reveal who our choices for the ten best actors of the modern age are!!!

Harold Hopkins (Left, with Jack Thompson in The Club) - 1944-2011

Australian actor Harold Hopkins has passed away.

Mr Hopkins has significant roles in Australian films The Club, Gallipoli, and Don’s Party, and according to recent reports had auditioned for a role in Bazz Lurhmann’s upcoming film version of The Great Gatsby. A graduate of NIDA, Hopkins appeared in a number of films throughout his career, including Age Of Consent, The Year My Voice Broke, Ginger Meggs, and Monkey Grip, as well as television series’ from The Young Doctors, The Dirtwater Dynasty, Blue Heelers, Police Rescue, Moby Dick (1998), All Saints, and most recently in Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities.

Mr Hopkins passed away in the early hours of this morning, aged 67.

Harry Morgan - 1915-2011

Harry Morgan, best known for his portrayal of Colonel Sherman T Potter in the long-running television series M*A*S*H, has passed away.

Morgan made his screen debut in the 1942 film To The Shores Of Tripoli, as well as the Glenn Miller based Orchestra Wives the same year. Other film roles for Morgan include appearences in High Noon, The Glenn Miller Story, The Far Country, How The West Was Won, and The Shootist. Morgan would play Bill Gannon in the TV version of Dragnet, before landing the role of Colonel Potter in M*A*S*H. His later career saw appearances in a number of TV roles, notably reprising his Dragnet character in the Dan Ackroyds starring vehicle of the same name.

Harry Morgan passed away on December 7th. He was 96.

Bill McKinney - 1931-2011

Bill McKinney, who famously asked Ned Beatty to “squeal like a pig” in the 1972 film Deliverance, has passed away.

McKinney appeared in a number of films during his life, the most notorious of which was the aforementioned Deliverance, although he also made a name for himself appearing in a number of Clint Eastwood projects, including Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet and Pink Cadillac, among others. He had a role alongside John Wayne in The Shootist, and a number of cameo roles in films such as Back To The Future Part III, First Blood, and The Green Mile. His television appearances included roles in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Murder She Wrote and Columbo.

Mr McKinney passed away peacefully on December 1st, aged 80.

Mr McKinney in 1999's The Green Mile.

Ken Russell - 1927-2011

British film director Ken Russell, whose 1969 film Women In Love received a number of Oscars as well as generating plenty of controversy, has passed away.

Russell is best remembered for Women In Love, Tommy, and Altered States, as well as one of my early favorites, The Music Lovers, which focused on Tchaikovsky. Russell’s Women In Love courted controversy (and was banned in Turkey) due to its depiction of male genitalia in a mainstream film, something which hadn’t been done before – fear not gentle reader, it was in the context of a wrestling match between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. Other films in his oeuvre include Lisztomania, The Devils, Crimes Of Passion, Prisoner Of Honor, Whore, Gothic, and The Lair Of The White Worm (with Hugh Grant), among others.

Mr Russell passed away on November 27, aged 84.

John Neville - 1925-2011

X Files and Terry Gilliam fans will be saddened today, to learn of the passing of British actor John Neville.

Neville made a name for himself playing The Well Manicured Man in the 90′s sci-fi series The X Files, as well as playing the title role in Terry Gilliam’s fabulous The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. He had cameos in a large number of films, including The Fifth Element, Little Women, The Man Who Sued God, Spider, Crime & Punishment, István Szabó’s Sunshine (1999), and Separate Lies. Mr Neville was also an accomplished stage actor, with acting credits in productions of Henry V, Romeo & Juliet, Pygmalion, Sherlock Holmes, and The Tempest, and directorial stints with productions of The Importance of Being Ernest, Antony & Cleopatra, Hamlet and Othello, among the many, many others.

Mr Neville passed away on November 19th, aged 86.

Sarah Watt - 1958-2011

Sad news over the weekend, as we learned of the passing of wonderful Aussie director Sarah Watt. Watt directed the AFI Best Picture film, Look Both Ways, during which I had the pleasure of spending time on set while they filmed key scenes at my apartment a few years ago. Look Both Ways is a stunning, low-key Aussie film, and anybody who has yet to see it, can I urge you to do so. Watt also directed My Year Without Sex, released in 2009, a film I have yet to see, although I can only assume it was of the same high caliber as Look Both Ways.

I met Ms Watt on the set of Look Both Ways, and she struck me as quiet and thoughtful – it was during production on this film that she was diagnosed with cancer, a fact I would not discover until much later. Regardless, she held herself well in the rigors of on-set filming, and I always have fond memories of her at that time.

Ms Watt was married to fellow Aussie, actor William McInnes. She passed away on November 4, aged 53.

This year’s Beneath The Earth short film competition was an undoubted success – just check out the quality of the entrants and short list of films to choose from. While perhaps not achieving the same broad-spectrum appeal as, say, Tropfest, BTE gave us some truly extraordinary short films this year, each with a style and individuality unique to their respective filmmakers. That’s the thing about short films, I guess: the filmmaker responsible has the ability to tell the story he/she wants without the constraints of studio interference or hindrance.

The two winners, one winning the judges prize and the other voted for by the public, are equally deserving of their place, although only one of them (I believe) is truly the best of the bunch. You can click here to see all the entrants and learn who won, but I’m about to cast a critical eye across both of the winners and let you know what I think, without prejudice.

Judges Choice: Photographs – Directed by Brendan Clogher & Christina “Kiki” Manrique

This short film tells the story of an elderly woman traipsing around a town taking photographs of herself. Sounds boring if you say it fast, but this is one hell of an elegant short film, a heartbreaking, wonderful, uplifting essay into loss, memory and revelation. Stunningly animated, Photographs is one of those shorts that transports you to your own childhood via the parallels of its own narrative, capturing the essence of time passing by with consummate ease. The old woman, taking photographs around town, is trying to recapture the memories of her younger days, as seen in one of the final sequences of the short, and it’s this that brings the moving elements of the short into focus (small photographic pun there!).

If there’s one thing any aspiring filmmaker can take from Photographs, it’s that animation doesn’t always have to be Pixar level quality or even realistic – the crux of a good animation is the story you have to tell, and Clocher/Manrique have got a good one. Simple, well told, Photographs is a short film that’ll stay with you long after you’ve watched it.

Audience Vote: After Ever After – Directed by Jeff Pinilla

While this film didn’t connect with me emotionally, at least compared to the other films on offer, I did appreciate the attempt to dissect a relationship breakdown. I felt After Ever After was a solid effort, even if I didn’t appreciate the story it was trying to tell. Visually, it’s quite modern, with abrupt angles, focus and color enhancement adding to the stylish, often claustrophobic nature of the imagery. I think Pinillia has tried to give the film a sense of emotional grandeur to which it’s unable to achieve, but I commend him for trying.

If I could be so bold as to mention my own personal favorites, they would have to be 2 Ambassadors and It’s Natural To Be Afraid – two exemplary examples of the short film genre. 2 Ambassadors is funny as hell (well, it struck a chord with my sense of humor) and Be Afraid is slick and stylish and so sexy-cool. It would be great if you could also check them out.

I’d like to thanks to organizers of BTEFF for asking me to participate in the judging, I had a great time watching and enjoying all the selected films, with special thanks to Antonia for her hard work behind the scenes. I do so hope to be a part of it next year!

All the films from this year’s festival are up on the main site until November 15th, so get in quick to watch some great up-and-coming talent in action! Click on the logo at the top of this post to go to the BTE Main Site!