The Webvisionary Awards recognizes outstanding work in categories that range from web apps to community sites. But more importantly, it’s a chance to strut your stuff in front of a panel of big-name judges and your peers. The cost is only $25 per entry, so submit your project today and take home some metal for your mantle. Entries will be accepted through May 8th, but don’t wait until the last minute.

The Webvisionary Awards ceremony will be held at the Bagdad Theatre on Thursday, May 21st from 7:30-9:00pm. Join our special guests, play presentation karaoke and more! The awards are sponsored by two of our favorite companies: WebTrends and 52 Ltd. Register online at WebvisionaryAwards.com.

 

On March 4th, our studio helped Qteros, ICM, Sapphire Energy and Greenleaf Biofuels to stage a forum on “The Future of Advanced Biofuels” in Washington, D.C. The event drew a standing room only crowd and included presentations by the leaders of the four biofuels companies plus addresses from visionary government officials such as Rep. John Olver and Sen. John Kerry.

Hot Pepper Studios designed and produced the website, event graphics, eNewsletters and other collateral for the event. Here’s to energy independence without using grains and food stocks!

Each time I go to Sundance, I wonder if there will be one film that stands apart from the others. Perhaps this year will be more even, with many great films but none that make a huge splash? To start the third day, we downed espressos and dashed over to the Prospector Theatre to see “The Queen and I,” a film by Nahid Persson Sarvestani, an exiled Iranian revolutionary who set out to make a documentary film based on interviews with Queen Farrah, the wife of the deposed Shah of Iran. What started as an exposé of the Queen turns into a begrudging friendship between the filmmaker and subject and an endearing portrait that explores history, politics and the falsity of ideologies.

Did I mention that - on the first day - we scored six sets of tickets to daytime films? We saw two of the films today: “Toe to Toe” and “Big Fan.” After a couple of days at the festival, we start to hear people’s reviews on the films and “Sin Nombre” and “Cold Souls” were sounding like winners. Unfortunately, we had tix to “Toe to Toe,” a meandering, overly earnest film about the turbulent friendship between a poor, high achieving African American girl and a rich, slacker white girl. While the performances of the lead actors were exceptional, the plot was contrived and tiresome, making for the longest 106 minutes that I’ve spent in a theatre.

“Big Fan” was a quirky and somewhat lightweight tragi-comedy about a hardcore football fan who - in an unusual turn of events - is beaten up by his favorite New York Giants player. As a pair of lovable losers, Patton Oswalt and Kevin Corrigan have the rapport and pitch perfect performances that hold the story together. The film also explores the seamy underbelly of sports talk radio and its über obsessive fans.

After a quick dinner, we dashed to the Holiday Theatre for “No Impact Man,” a documentary that follows Colin Beavan, his wife and young daughter as they lived for one year with no net impact on the planet. As Colin puts it, “no trash, no carbon emissions, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, no toilets…”