BEST ACTOR (FEMALE)BEST HALIFAMOUS PERSONELLEN PAGEAs The Coast pointed out in December 2007, last year our homegirl Ellen went from local teen talent to international megastar, as the teen dramedy Juno led to her first Academy Award nomination and a gig hosting Saturday Night Live. It might seem perverse to say it, but that was the easy part. Sure, she worked hard and honed her chops, taking intense roles in challenging projects---see Hard Candy, Mouth to Mouth and An American Crime if you don’t believe us---but whether she continues to get access to the juiciest scripts Hollywood has to offer depends on her next few pictures. First up: She’s Bliss Cavendar in Whip It!, Drew Barrymore’s feature debut as a director. Maybe not a bad choice: Barrymore could teach a course on career longevity. Plus, it’s about roller derby. Awesome.

1st Runner-up: (Actor) Sue Leblanc, (Halifamous) Joel Plaskett2nd Runner-up: (Actor) Lucy DeCoutere, (Halifamous) Sidney Crosby

BEST ACTOR (MALE)JOHN DUNSWORTHHaving recently wrapped up shooting the first sequel to the enormously popular Trailer Park Boys movie (“it’s a tour de force,” he says) the multi-talented builder/sculptor/writer/casting agent/director/teacher/auctioneer/actor who plays Jim Lahey has plenty of other projects on the go. He and his TPB sidekick Pat Roach plan a tour of points west, until the west meets the east, with a November sojourn to Afghanistan. He also has a film project in Cuba unrelated to trailer parks or days full of liquor. In the mean time he’s writing a book, a “murder-mystery sci-fi paranormal” novel with the working title of Temporary Insanity. It started with a 3:30am bit of inspiration, but now is more a matter of Dunsworth trying to collate all his notes and focusing the narrative. “It’s not heavy, not deep, not thick… it’s dense.”

1st Runner-up: Mike Smith2nd Runner Up: Brian MacQuarrie

BEST AUTHOR/POETTANYA DAVISTanya Davis is much adored by Coast readers, which surprises her. She’s a poet and performer who actually has very few of her words published. “I’m one of those plain language poets,” she says, thinking on her appeal. “People who don’t really like poetry say they like me.” Anyone who has seen Davis perform will probably have had a taste of her spoken word work, interspersed between the music. Gorgeous Morning, Davis’s album released earlier this year, will be toured through the winter, which isn’t the only thing the PEI native has going on. Her ambitions include a video poem with Andrea Dorfman and getting her words into print. “An alternative book,” she says, “as I’m an alternative poet.”

1st Runner-up: Lesley Choyce2nd Runner-up: Stephanie Domet

BEST COMEDIANMARK LITTLESee cover story.

1st Runner-up: Shawn Majumder2nd Runner-up: Candy Palmeter

BEST COMIC ARTISTMIKE HOLMESA few short years ago, Holmes was a part-timer at a local art supply store and drawing shockingly accurate caricatures of local people in Matt Groening’s Simpsons style. Now he’s a cartoonist and comic book creator in demand, working on a variety of projects, including a full-colour short story inspired by the Spearmint song “This Is A Souvenir” and a six-issue miniseries with writer Jamie S. Rich, potentially for comic publisher Oni, as well as teaching drawing workshops, as he did at the Ross Creek Centre this past summer. Oh, and there’s also his popular True Story strip for The Coast. “I have a blast doing it,” he says. “I get a lot of stories from friends, but I love getting stories from people I’ve never met before.”

1st Runner-up: Peter Diamond2nd Runner-up: Dave Howlett

BEST DANCE COMPANYMOCEAN DANCE420-4162You won’t be seeing much of Mocean Dance around this month, because the company---with 5 full-time dancers, including new addition, Chicoutimi’s Tania Jean---is on a tour of New Brunswick, performing in Moncton and doing a residency at Mount Allison University in Sackville. Look for their next local show to hit Halifax in January (22nd to 24th), the premiere a new work by Quebec choreographer Estelle Clareton, it’ll happen at the Dunn Theatre at Dalhousie. Make sure you catch the dazzling, modern dance ensemble then because they don’t stop: They’ll be off again for a full Atlantic tour immediately following, first to Summerside, PEI and then to Newfoundland.

1st Runner-up: Halifax Dance, Maritime Centre, Suite G-6, 1505 Barrington, 422-20062nd Runner-up: Verve Mwendo

BEST DANCERMONIQUE RYAN You may know her from her full-back tattoo of a snake and a cherry blossom tree, inked by her boyfriend, Andy Ferrier, who you can find elsewhere on this list. The 26-year-old Ryan has been belly dancing for 10 years, starting when she was in high school and a friend invited her to a ballet class, which was, in fact, a belly dancing class. Fast forward a decade: She’s now an expert in Tribal Fusion, a “darker, earthier, more snake-like,” style of belly dancing, utilizing any kind of music (Ryan likes electronic, DJ, Indian-influenced stuff). You can catch her in her occasional performances with Cabaret Serpentine, with fellow dancer Laura Selenzi, as well when she’s on stage with Pink Velvet Burlesque. Or head down to Studio In Essence (1717 Barrington, 405-5500) and sign up for a class: She also teaches.

1st Runner-up: Corey Bowles2nd Runner-up: Gwen Noah

BEST FESTIVALTHE ATLANTIC FILM FESTIVAL5600 Sackville, 422-3456The 2008 edition of the Atlantic Film Festival was the largest it’s ever been, with 254 features and short films rocking the screens around the city. Every year in September we prove that we’re a city full of cinephiles, lining up for tickets to the strangest movies, slices of celluloid that won’t ever get distribution outside maybe New York or Los Angeles. Witness the October release of Quarantine, the American remake of Spanish buzz flick , that played at the AFF. At least we got a chance to see the original on the big screen. Then there was Donkey Punch, Wendy and Lucy, Visioneers and a host of dynamite documentaries, such as Man On Wire and Of All The Things about songwriter Dennis Lambert’s Filipino comeback. Lambert even came to town to perform. It’ll be hard to top next year.

1st Runner-up: Halifax International Busker Festival, 430-84132nd Runner-up: Halifax Pop Explosion

BEST FINE ARTS PHOTOGRAPHERJosh WebbWell known for his magazine, fashion and commercial work, Webb continues to make time for his fine art photography as well. “I really enjoy doing both,” he says. “Anything I shoot, someone still commissions me as an artist to realize their vision. I think about what I want to convey and I try to relay my emotions into that.” Webb, who has lived all over the world and worked in a variety of fields, does his best to put himself and his experiences into the photos. Expect to exhibitions from him in 2009, a collection of photos taken in Africa, and something called The Shadow Series, a collection of dramatically lit nudes.

1st Runner-up: Shaun Lowe2nd Runner-up: Sarah DeVenne

BEST GALLERYARGYLE FINE ART1869 Upper Water Street, 425-9456Argyle has extended its gallery space into an adjacent building, a constantly changing project room filled with a variety of different styles and shows, called Blink!, as in “blink and you’ll miss it,” says Argyle Fine Art owner Adriana Afford. The new exhibitions don’t stop there, however, with Afford looking into potentially utilizing more spaces downtown and finding studios for visiting artists. At Argyle this month, check out Chr!s Sm!th’s collaborative piece REPIXX, work from Craig Gunn and New Brunswicker Adam MacDonald, and starting on the 20th, Argyle Fine Art becomes a weekly music venue, starting with a songwriter’s circle. Expect to see Whiskey Kisses and Carmen Townsend gig there in the future.

1st Runner-up: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 1723 Hollis, 424-75422nd Runner-up: Gallery Page & Strange, 1903 Barrington, 422-8995

BEST INDEPENDENT FILMMAKERJASON EISENERWhen tracked down, Halifax’s Best Indie Filmmaker is in Cape Breton, helping out on a friend’s movie. If he wasn’t busy enough: “I’ve been working on Hobo,”--- With A Shotgun, the feature length version of the trailer that Tarantino and Rodriguez loved---“on another draft of the script.” That script attracted the interest of major Canadian big wheel Niv Fichman (Blindness, Passchendaele), who has signed on as executive producer, and Eisener hopes to shoot the feature in spring 2009. Meanwhile, he’s finishing cutting his gang picture Streets of Domination, which has taken longer to finish than he’d hoped. “I’d love to get it out for Christmas,” he says.

1st Runner-up: Thom Fitzgerald2nd Runner-up: Jay Dahl

BEST LOCAL BLOGLIVING BETWEEN WEDNESDAYSBlogger, MBA student, sometime Stolen Minks member, former Coast writer/salesperson and current Strange Adventures part-timer, Rachelle Goguen is a little bummed because she couldn’t do as much on her Supergirl theme week as she wanted. Hey, she’s busy. The blog, which is all about Goguen’s passion for comics, remains popular with fans and creators: She got 1,600 hits one day in October. And her visit to Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina in June allowed her to meet some of those regular readers. “It was pretty nice to have people I really admire say they liked the blog.” She’s just bought the domain livingbetweenwednesdays.com, so expect the blog to be moving to its own server very soon.

1st Runner-up: HeroHill2nd Runner-up: Bringing It To The Table

BEST LOCAL FILMTREEVENGEHaving rocked the worlds of everyone who saw it at the Atlantic Film Festival’s multiple screenings, as well as at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, at the Montreal-based genre cinema fest Fantasia, Jason Eisener and Rob Cotterill’s horror flick snatched a Best Short/Audience award. It also showed at the closing night of Toronto After Dark, the cult/horror/scifi festival in October. For those who haven’t seen it, it is a thoughtful, pastoral environmental film. No, not really: It’s a bloody tale of trees that get their revenge on people on Christmas morning for years of garlands, ornaments and abuse. And Eisener is nowhere near done with short films. As he does post on Streets of Domination and prep on Hobo With A Shotgun, both features, he wants to make another short movie. “Let them know,” he tells us, “if anyone wants to fund the next short, we’re looking!”

1st Runner-up: 6015 Willow 2nd Runner-up: Poor Boy’s Game

BEST RADIO SHOWLET’S GET BAKED WITH MAT AND DAVE, CKDUThe winner of a National Campus Radio award for Best Magazine Show in 2008, the homegrown Halifax cooking show that gets musicians in the kitchen is aired on 23 stations across Canada, and hosts Mat Dunlap and Dave Ewenson even went as far to do a TV pilot, though Dunlap says that television “isn’t something we have a lot of time to pursue.” Instead they’re into the 5th season of their show, as well as doing their other creative projects, which include running the Just Friends record empire. Dunlap says that highlights of the past few years have been the “extraordinarily awesome” burrito recipe by The Weakerthans, croissants with Buck 65 and being witness to Owen Pallet’s “crazy good” skills in the kitchen.

1st Runner-up: BJ & the Q Morning Crew, Q1042nd Runner-up: Mainstreet, CBC

BEST LOCAL TV PRODUCTIONTRAILER PARK BOYSThey said it was gone, they said it was done, they said seven seasons were enough. You know, except for one more TV special, and a 2009 sequel to their box office-busting feature film, entitled Countdown to Liquor Day. Now we have it from a reliable source that season eight might still be in the cards. Never say never with these boys (and girls). The fact of the matter is they all still love doing it, working in the summer, offering up the kind of highbrow local culture that Nova Scotia tourism just loves. Well, maybe not, but John “Lahey” Dunsworth has done voiceover work for tourism TV commercials, though more with the gravitas and the aerial scenery and less with the drinking and the moustache and the swears.

1st Runner-up: This Hour Has 22 Minutes, CBC2nd Runner-up: Live at 5, CTV Atlantic

BEST LOCAL WEBSITEHALIFAXLOCALS.COMSean McGillivray has been the brains and brawn behind Halifax Locals since 2000. Though it doesn’t take much of his time---a little bit every day to make changes in the band list, adding events and posters---that’s probably for the best as he has other interests, including a gig as the technical director of The Halifax Pop Explosion and being a Night Painter, one of Jenn Grant’s band. He gets help managing the site from a “shadowy cabal,” associates who are involved “pulling the chains and pushing all the buttons,” and, as well, he credits “the people who use the site, contributing a lot.” Thanks Sean, since, you know, that’s all of us.

1st Runner-up: thecoast.ca2nd Runner-up: reality-check.ca

BEST MOVIE THEATREOXFORD THEATRE6408 Quinpool, 423-7488 The big room remains a popular choice for local filmmakers who want to rent it out to premiere their films, and let’s face it, The Oxford is the last of its kind in the region, the beautiful old movie house complete with balcony. Who wouldn’t want their film to show there? Though programming whims sometimes confound its unofficial status as Halifax’s last art house cinema (*Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* played there two months after it opened elsewhere, and there was a run of *The Dark Knight*), more often than not you’ll see fewer of the blockbusters in the grand place and more of the multiplex-unfriendly foreign language, independent and documentary movies, such as *The Visitor, The Band’s Visit* and *Religulous,* which we heartily endorse.

1st Runner-up: Empire 17 Bayers Lake, 190 Chain Lake, 876-4800 2nd Runner-up: Empire 8 Park Lane, Park Lane Mall, 5657 Spring Garden, 423-4860

BEST PLAYTHE PRODUCERSNEPTUNE THEATRE1593 Argyle Street, 429-7070There are times when creative properties get so big you forget where they came from. For those who don’t know, The Producers ran a similar track to Hairspray. There was a Mel Brooks movie with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder as Max and Leo, out to scam money from investors by producing a sure-fire bomb, called Springtime for Hitler, a production in such bad taste everyone is sure to hate it. But no, most everyone loves it. Then there was the musical version, also by Mel Brooks, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, which did big business on Broadway and earned a raft of Tonys. Then there was a movie of the musical, also with Lane and Broderick. And Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell. Are you still with us? And then, only then, did the musical version of the movie that then became a movie, play here, at Neptune. And yes, most everyone loved it.

1st Runner-up: Penny Dreadful, Zuppa Circus 2nd Runner-up: Cinderelly, Shakespeare by the Sea

BEST PLAYWRIGHTDANIEL MACIVORWe’ll leave it to MacIvor himself to fill you in on what he’s been doing of late, in an email you can just tell was typed at furious speed: “Currently I'm in Montreal working on the script of a new play called Redemption with the second year students at National Theatre School. I just got back from Washington DC where I was directing my play A Beautiful View, which I'm hoping to direct in Halifax next year with Kathryn MacLellan and Jackie Torrens as the two characters. Confession is also a new play that Ann-Marie is directing at Mulgrave Road right now, it will play Guysborough, Truro and Chester, end of October, early November, no Halifax dates yet. Confession and Redepemption are the first and third play of a trilogy I'm working on called The Hunger Trilogy. The middle play is Communion which I've been working on at the Banff Centre. Phew. Best, Daniel.” (Oh, and, PS: he won the Siminovitch prize, worth $100,000.)

1st Runner-up: David Connellan2nd Runner-up: Anthony Black

BEST POLITICAL CARTOONISTBRUCE MACKINNONThe Chronicle-Herald The renowned cartoonist has had a “wacky” year, with multiple election fun, and months of email response to an Obama cartoon which was misappropriated, altered and used as anti-Obama propaganda. “That proved to be the gift that kept on giving,” he says. Add to that an investigation by the police following a complaint registered by representatives of a local Islamic group over a cartoon he did relating to the “Toronto 18” terrorism case. There were no charges, but, according to MacKinnon, a human rights complaint by the same group is still outstanding. “And here I was starting to wonder if cartoons were still relevant.”

1st Runner-up: Michael De Adder

BEST THEATRE ACTOR (FEMALE)SUE LEBLANC-CRAWFORDWhen reached, Zuppa Circus co-artistic director LeBlanc-Crawford is in the midst of rehearsing for Poor Boy, a show that will go up at Neptune Theatre in February as part of Neptune’s studio series. “We’re still in the middle of creating it,” she says. This will be a bit of a departure for Zuppa, taking an already existing score, written and performed by Heavy Blinkers Dave Christensen and Jason MacIsaac, and using it to create a contemporary retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. “We feel very healthy right now,” she says. “We’re spending more time making shows.” A big plus, says LeBlanc-Crawford, has been the fact they’re now in the Canada Council operating funding pool, which provides year-round support. “Our peers around the country are saying we should be running all year.”

1st Runner-up: Annie Valentina2nd Runner-up: Mary Faye Coady BEST THEATRE ACTOR (MALE)BEN STONEBen Stone, is, like his fellow co-director Sue LeBlanc-Crawford, up to his eyeballs in Poor Boy, the new Zuppa Circus production slated to show at Neptune in February. “It’s taking the majority of my time,” says the founder of the 10-year-old, cutting-edge theatre company. For the show he has to play piano, which he’s been taking lessons on for a few years, when he’s had time, though he admits he’s currently at a “grade 2” level. That’s some stones (no pun intended) he’s got right there, given in a few short months he’ll be performing in front of people, playing music by local music wizards Dave Christensen and Dave MacIsaac. Break a leg out there.

1st Runner-up: Jeremy Webb2nd Runner-up: Stewart Legere

BEST VISUAL ARTISTYO RODEONow full time in the studio, Paul Hammond and Seth Smith have been busy with their trade, “album covers, posters, t-shirt designs and stuff like that,” writes Hammond in an email. At Nocturne, the city-wide nighttime art show in October, they premiered a series of anaglyphic (red/blue) 3D art prints at the Blink! Gallery, called Three Dee Realms (open until November 10). “We're hoping over the next year or so to shift our focus from primarily design to primarily art,” says Hammond. “We're definitely going to continue doing posters, and album covers, and all sorts of things... but I think that the success of this show was really what we needed to prove to ourselves that we should be spending more of our time working on art, which is really what we want to do anyway.”

1st Runner-up: James White2nd Runner-up: Rachel Parsons