NEWS: Cinevegas Awards Star Line-up!

I've had this info for weeks and was only told to keep it to myself through the first week of May, so I'm ready to put it out there since I haven't seen it reported anywhere else...

This year's Cinevegas Film Festival is going to be HUGE. They've had a few solid stars in the past, but this time the wattage is off the charts, befitting its host city. It's already well-known that the Vegas premiere of "Oceans 13" will kick off the 10-day event on June 6 with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle and Ellen Barkin all in tow. The producer of the film, Jerry Weintraub, will received the festival's Vanguard Producers Award and the opener will benefit Weintraub's Darfur charity.

But...now it can be told. Here are three other awards:

Vanguard Director: Mike Newell (Harry Potter IV, Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and a Funeral). Also, they'll show a preview of his latest, "Love in the Time of Cholera."

Half-Life Award (bestowed on a successful actor at mid-career): Oscar winner Charlize Theron, who stars in the Oscar-bait Paul Haggis flick "In the Valley of Elah" due out this fall.

Marquee Award: Oscar winner Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Closing night is June 16, when they'll show the world premiere of "You Kill Me" starring Luke Wilson, Tea Leoni and Ben Kingsley. No telling which stars will attend, but odds are high it could be all of them.

Congrats to everyone involved. Cinevegas has come a long, long way from the days when they were reduced to play old films to round out the schedule. This year they've got 91 films on the lineup from indy foreign stuff to shorts from UNLV students.

Here's hoping they dispense with the sort of pretentious, anemic live interviews that Elvis Mitchell committed with Julian Schnabel a few years back after a screening of "Before Night Falls." God, that was awful. And I actually enjoy some of the podcasts of Mitchell's KCRW show "The Treatment." That sort of pretention just plays better on the radio when you can't SEE how full of the conversers are.

Speaking of podcasts, we had Dennis Hopper, chairman of Cinevegas, on "The Strip" last year. Hear that show here now or right-click here and listen to it whenever you want.