Striking It Lucky at the 2004 Movie Site Awards

by allo for DanRadcliffe.com, 23rd September 2004.

DanRadcliffe.com was a two-time winner last night at Movies.com's 2004 Movie Site Awards, winning both the Audience Pick (chosen by movie fans in an online poll) and the Editors' Pick (chosen by the editors of Movies.com) in the Best Actor Fan Site category.

The Movie Site Awards were launched this year by Movies.com as a way of recognizing the extensive amount of time, effort and expense that goes into creating and maintaining movie-related websites. Movies.com, which is operated by the Walt Disney Internet Group, devised an awards system that would honor both official, studio-related sites and fan-operated sites and between May and July this year, fans and website staff were invited to nominate their favorite sites. The Movies.com editorial staff sifted through thousands of entries and narrowed the field down to ten categories of site, with up to five nominees in each category.

Voting took place between July and September and literally hundreds of thousands of votes were tallied. The winners were selected in two ways: an Audience Pick, which was the site which received the most votes in the online poll, and the Editors' Pick, which was the best site in the category as chosen by the editors at Movies.com. To celebrate the announcement of the winners, Movies.com invited all the nominees to a night of "fun, food and bowling" at the Lucky Strike Lanes, an upscale bowling lounge in Hollywood, California, set in the Hollywood and Highland entertainment complex (which also houses the Kodak Theater, home of the Academy Awards ceremony).

Unfortunately, due to the international nature of the Web, not all of the nominees could be present but several sites did manage to send staff and some of them were lucky enough to go home with some hardware! DR.com was represented by yours truly and our special correspondent, Kim, and we were thrilled to pick up both awards in our category. Other wins worthy of a mention: fellow HP fan site Mugglenet was the Audience Pick in the Best Movie Fan Site and the Official Harry Potter Site won both the Audience Pick and Editors' Pick in the Best Official Movie Site category. For a full list of the nominees and winners, please visit the 2004 Movie Site Awards winners page.

Dan Sherlock, Vice President of Movies.com, presents the Best Actor Fan Site plaques to DR.com co-webmaster Allo (left) and Kim.

In the finest tradition of awards ceremonies, we would, of course, like to say a few thank yous: To everyone who took the time to vote for us (and nominate us in the first place, as we were so preoccupied with the release of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that we forgot to do it ourselves!) - we feel very honored that you appreciate our efforts so much. To the editors at Movies.com - we're very flattered to be recognized by our counterparts in "the industry". Finally, huge thanks to everyone who has visited, supported and contributed to our site over the last few years, particularly our hardworking staff members and moderators, Warner Bros for their cooperation and, of course, Daniel Radcliffe, who is our inspiration!

(Cue sound of orchestra playing "Hedwig's Theme")

What, is our time up already?? But we haven't thanked our publicist, our lawyer, our hairdresser... :-)

Anyway, thank you very much to the team at Movies.com for organizing the awards and hosting the celebration! Movies.com is an excellent resource for movie news, reviews, showtimes and tickets (US only) and much more - keep an eye out for some great new developments coming to their site in the very near future.

More Pictures...

We'll spare you the truly horrible shots of us bowling (to paraphrase Hermione, "Is that really what we look like from the back???") but here's a couple more pictures of some of the nominees and winners:

Kim and Allo with bowling partners Alonda and Angela from Team Nicole, a Nicole Kidman site nominated in the Best Actress Fan Site category. (Note Harry Potter t-shirts by Hot Topic!)

Kim and Allo with Cathy (aka Garfeimao), a fan relations organizer from TheOneRing.net, a Lord of the Rings site which pipped Mugglenet to the Editors' Pick in the Best Movie Fan Site category. Cathy also collected the Audience Pick award in the Best Director Fan Site category for TBHL - The Official Peter Jackson Fan Club, which is also hosted by TheOneRing.net.

The Lucky Strike Lanes, the best place to bowl in Hollywood. (The ONLY place to bowl in Hollywood!)

To see other awards presented to our site, please check our Site Awards Album.