Jessica Chastain, Howard Shore to Be Honored at Palm Springs Film Festival

The Hollywoodreporter.com reports that actress Jessica Chastain and composer Howard Shore will join the esteemed list of honorees for the 23rd Palm Springs International Film Festival to be held on January 7th at the Palm Springs Convention Center.

Jessica Chastain will be the recipient of the Spotlight Award for her performances in the 2011 films The Help, The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, The Debt and Coriolanus. The festival chairman, Harold Matzner, praised Chastain and commented, "Through a series of virtuoso performances, Jessica Chastain has established herself as one of the cinema's most versatile and most sought after young actresses."

Howard Shore is to receive the Frederick Loewe Music Award for his score in this year's Martin Scorsese film, Hugo. Shore is a previous recipient of this award from his work in 2005's The Aviator. Praising Shore's musical talents, Matzer said, "Howard Shore is a master composer who has consistently delighted audiences of the more than 80 films that he has scored. In Hugo, the labyrinthine setting of a Paris railway station, where a young boy lives alone, doing what he must to survive, and the discovery of an aging filmmaker gifted with a second chance provide the perfect inspiration for Shore's haunting score."

The Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) is one of the largest film festivals in North America, welcoming 130,000 attendees each year for its lineup of new and celebrated international features and documentaries. The Festival is also known for its annual Black Tie Awards Gala, honoring the best achievements of the filmic year by a celebrated list of talents who, in recent years, have included Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Bridges, Danny Boyle, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Colin Firth, Ron Howard, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman and Kate Winslet.

This year's festival will run from January 5-16, 2012.