Galifianakis, Bieber among Webby Award winners
Arcade Fire, Jim Carrey, NFB among Canadians recognized
As a mock interview show host, Zach Galifianakis is accruing awards at the rate of a 60 Minutes correspondent.
Galifianakis led the 15th annual Webby Awards on Tuesday with four awards for his web series Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. He won best web personality/host, best comedy short and best online variety show. He won the latter in both the voter-chosen People's Voice category, and the proper Webby Award category.
The Webbys, which celebrate internet achievement, are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a group of 750 Web experts as well as other Internet professionals.
Galifianakis' irreverent, sporadically released show, which appears on FunnyOrDie.com, is done in the style of a cable access show. Galifianakis, who was honored last year by the Webbys as best actor, belligerently and absurdly interviews celebrity guests.
Lisa Kudrow won two awards for her Web Therapy series.
Montreal band Arcade Fire's innovative The Wilderness Downtown music video also won two awards, as did the interactive Johnny Cash Project. Both web-based music videos were directed by Chris Milk.
Stratford, Ont. pop star Justin Bieber took the People's Voice award for best comedy video for his April Fool's takeover of FunnyOrDie.com as Bieber or Die. The site's home page was remade with clips featuring Bieber in famous viral videos.
The comedy site, co-founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, can boast about nine awards. That includes the Webby for best humour site and a People's Voice award for Canadian Jim Carrey's performance as Ronald Reagan in the site's star-packed Presidential Reunionvideo.
Nostalgic NFB web doc wins
The National Film Board of Canada, which was nominated for several different productions, won two awards (in the documentary: individual episode and netart categories) for Welcome to Pine Point, a nostalgic project that is both a celebration of a small, N.W.T. mining town and a lament on its subsequent closure.
The multimedia work, created by Vancouver-based producers Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons, combines photos, music, film and interactive elements.
Calgary-based non-profit Science Alberta Foundation also picked up a Webby in the animation category for Do You Know What Nano Means?, a short online film for children about nanotechnology.
A handful of nominated Canadian projects failed to nab Webbys, including the celebrated Highrise/Out My Window and two other NFB productions, the web series Out With Dad and the CBCNews.ca web video chronicle Canadians in Haiti: Stories of Loss and Remembrance.
The app sensation Angry Birds was chosen for best game, for both the Webby and the People's Voice award. The New Yorker's website won the Webby for best magazine site. PBS's iPad app was picked for best entertainment for a tablet. Conan O'Brien's TeamCoco.com won the Webby for best celebrity or fan website.
The New York Times, which recently began charging readers for access to its site, won three awards in how-to, travel and mobile.
A full list of winners can be found at WebbyAwards.com. Special recognition awards will be announced later.
The awards will be handed out in a ceremony in New York on June 13. The Webbys are famous for their trademark brevity, with acceptance speeches limited to just five words.
With files from CBC