2008 Woodie Awards
Vote Absentee
An army's worth of empty boots were laid in rows on the swampy grass of the Boston Common on Saturday afternoon. Although they initially appeared to be nothing more than old, beat-up shoes, each pair of boots was marked with the name, age and rank of all 156 soldiers from New England who have died since the Iraq war began.
It's a familiar storyline: a college neighboring the Boston Common buys a historic but defunct theatre on Washington Street and plans to renovate it, preserving the facade but replacing the inside with a dormitory tower and performance space. This theatre, too, is scheduled to open in 2009 and satisfies the college's plan to increase its residential population and Mayor Thomas Menino's 12-year plan to revitalize Downtown Crossing.
Sam Ewen doesn't believe in being creative for the sake of being creative. So when he's smashing giant dinosaur footprints into cars to promote the Discovery Channel, sending fake tourists to covertly advertise a new Sony camera-phone or releasing 34 Roman soldiers into the streets of New York for HBO, he means business.
Edward Freni stepped up to the podium at about 11 a.m. on Oct. 27 to report a tragedy. Soaked from the pelting rain, the Massachusetts Port Authority Aviation Director delivered the news: 20 passengers died and 70 more were injured when two Boeing 757s collided at Logan International Airport while taxiing between runways.
