21Feb10
Another weekend, another round of awards. But this year's Orange British Academy Film Awards (Baftas) are noteworthy because Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker has just pulled off a pretty decent sweep: Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (Mark Boal), Best Cinematography (Barry Ackroyd), Best Film Editing (Bob Murawski and Chris Innis) and Best Sound.
Colin Firth's won Best Actor for his performance in Tom Ford's A Single Man, while Carey Mulligan's been named Best Actress for hers in Lone Scherfig's An Education.
For Xan Brooks, who live-blogged the evening for the Guardian, the first surprise came with the announcement of the winner of the "outstanding British film" award: "Coming into the night, I was smugly convinced that this one would go to An Education, paving the way for its eventual, low-key failure in the race for the all-important best film award. But no. This year's outstanding British film is Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold's sweaty, potent kitchen-sink drama."
No surprises in the supporting roles categories: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) and Mo'Nique (Precious). Jacques Audiard's A Prophet's won Best Foreign Film, and for a complete list of winners, turn to Guy Lodge at In Contention. By the way, if you haven't seen the posters Tavis Coburn designed for each of the films nominated for Best Film, do click his name and take a look.
Meantime, the Writers Guild Awards were presented on Saturday night. Best Original Screenplay went to - surprise! - Mark Boal for The Hurt Locker; Best Adapted Screenplay to Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for Up in the Air; and Best Documentary Screenplay to Mark Monroe for The Cove.
Updates, 2/22: Ambrose Heron gathers backstage interviews with the winners and David Poland posts longish interviews with Bigelow and Mulligan and Scherfig, which can be watched or downloaded as MP3s.
"It's just a shame that The Hurt Locker is good, but not that good," writes Dan North. "Whatever the visuals are doing to make it all feel authentic and asphyxiatingly tense, the plot contrivances work in the opposite direction."
MS Smith catches up with Fish Tank.
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