British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards - the results

For those who are interested, here are the full results for last night's BAFTA awards. Personally, I was thrilled to see Kathryn Bigelow win Best Director. There are precious few female directors winning major awards. It's about time.

ACADEMY FELLOWSHIP
VANESSA REDGRAVE

OUTSTANDING BRITISH CONTRIBUTION TO CINEMA
JOE DUNTON

BEST FILM
AVATAR James Cameron, Jon Landau
AN EDUCATION Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey
THE HURT LOCKER Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, Greg Shapiro
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magness
UP IN THE AIR Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman, Daniel Dubiecki

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
AN EDUCATION Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey, Lone Scherfig, Nick Hornby
FISH TANK Kees Kasander, Nick Laws, Andrea Arnold
IN THE LOOP Kevin Loader, Adam Tandy, Armando Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche
MOON Stuart Fenegan, Trudie Styler, Duncan Jones, Nathan Parker
NOWHERE BOY Robert Bernstein, Douglas Rae, Kevin Loader, Sam Taylor-Wood, Matt Greenhalgh

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER
LUCY BAILEY, ANDREW THOMPSON, ELIZABETH MORGAN HEMLOCK, DAVID PEARSON Directors, Producers – Mugabe and the White African
ERAN CREEVY Writer/Director – Shifty
STUART HAZELDINE Writer/Director – Exam
DUNCAN JONES Director – Moon
SAM TAYLOR-WOOD Director – Nowhere Boy

DIRECTOR
AVATAR James Cameron
DISTRICT 9 Neill Blomkamp
AN EDUCATION Lone Scherfig
THE HURT LOCKER Kathryn Bigelow
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Quentin Tarantino

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
THE HANGOVER Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
THE HURT LOCKER Mark Boal
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Quentin Tarantino
A SERIOUS MAN Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
UP Pete Docter, Bob Peterson

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
DISTRICT 9 Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
AN EDUCATION Nick Hornby
IN THE LOOP Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE Geoffrey Fletcher
UP IN THE AIR Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
BROKEN EMBRACES Agustín Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar
COCO BEFORE CHANEL Carole Scotta, Caroline Benjo, Philippe Carcassonne, Anne Fontaine
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN Carl Molinder, John Nordling, Tomas Alfredson
A PROPHET Pascal Caucheteux, Marco Cherqui, Alix Raynaud, Jacques Audiard
THE WHITE RIBBON Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka, Margaret Menegoz, Michael Haneke

ANIMATED FILM
CORALINE Henry Selick
FANTASTIC MR FOX Wes Anderson
UP Pete Docter

LEADING ACTOR
JEFF BRIDGES Crazy Heart
GEORGE CLOONEY Up in the Air
COLIN FIRTH A Single Man
JEREMY RENNER The Hurt Locker
ANDY SERKIS Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

LEADING ACTRESS
CAREY MULLIGAN An Education
SAOIRSE RONAN The Lovely Bones
GABOUREY SIDIBE Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
MERYL STREEP Julie & Julia
AUDREY TAUTOU Coco Before Chanel

SUPPORTING ACTOR
ALEC BALDWIN It’s Complicated
CHRISTIAN McKAY Me and Orson Welles
ALFRED MOLINA An Education
STANLEY TUCCI The Lovely Bones
CHRISTOPH WALTZ Inglourious Basterds

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
ANNE-MARIE DUFF Nowhere Boy
VERA FARMIGA Up in the Air
ANNA KENDRICK Up in the Air
MO’NIQUE Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS Nowhere Boy

MUSIC
AVATAR James Horner
CRAZY HEART T-Bone Burnett, Stephen Bruton
FANTASTIC MR FOX Alexandre Desplat
SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL Chaz Jankel
UP Michael Giacchino

CINEMATOGRAPHY
AVATAR Mauro Fiore
DISTRICT 9 Trent Opaloch
THE HURT LOCKER Barry Ackroyd
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Robert Richardson
THE ROAD Javier Aguirresarobe

EDITING
AVATAR Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
DISTRICT 9 Julian Clarke
THE HURT LOCKER Bob Murawski, Chris Innis
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Sally Menke
UP IN THE AIR Dana E. Glauberman

PRODUCTION DESIGN
AVATAR Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, Kim Sinclair
DISTRICT 9 Philip Ivey, Guy Potgieter
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE Stuart Craig, Stephenie McMillan
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS Dave Warren, Anastasia Masaro, Caroline Smith
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS David Wasco, Sandy Reynolds Wasco

COSTUME DESIGN
BRIGHT STAR Janet Patterson
COCO BEFORE CHANEL Catherine Leterrier
AN EDUCATION Odile Dicks-Mireaux
A SINGLE MAN Arianne Phillips
THE YOUNG VICTORIA Sandy Powell

SOUND
AVATAR Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, Tony Johnson, Addison Teague
DISTRICT 9 Brent Burge, Chris Ward, Dave Whitehead, Michael Hedges, Ken Saville
THE HURT LOCKER Ray Beckett, Paul N. J. Ottosson
STAR TREK Peter J. Devlin, Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer, Mark Stoeckinger, Ben Burtt
UP Tom Myers, Michael Silvers, Michael Semanick, Doc Kane

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
AVATAR Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, Andrew R. Jones
DISTRICT 9 Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros, Matt Aitken
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE John Richardson, Tim Burke, Tim Alexander, Nicolas Aithadi
THE HURT LOCKER Richard Stutsman
STAR TREK Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh, Burt Dalton

MAKE UP & HAIR
COCO BEFORE CHANEL Thi Thanh Tu Nguyen, Madeleine Cofano, Jane Milon
AN EDUCATION Lizzie Yianni Georgiou
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS Sarah Monzani
NINE Peter Swords King
THE YOUNG VICTORIA Jenny Shircore

SHORT ANIMATION
THE GRUFFALO Michael Rose, Martin Pope, Jakob Schuh, Max Lang
THE HAPPY DUCKLING Gili Dolev
MOTHER OF MANY Sally Arthur, Emma Lazenby

SHORT FILM
14 Asitha Ameresekere
I DO AIR James Bolton, Martina Amati
JADE Samm Haillay, Daniel Elliott
MIXTAPE Luti Fagbenle, Luke Snellin
OFF SEASON Jacob Jaffke, Jonathan van Tulleken

THE ORANGE RISING STAR AWARD (voted for by the public)
JESSE EISENBERG
NICHOLAS HOULT
CAREY MULLIGAN
TAHAR RAHIM
KRISTEN STEWART

Two Hours In Another World

I love movies. I love them. I’ve always loved them and I always will. I love watching them, I love writing them and I love collecting them. To me, there is no other medium like it. I enjoy music, I enjoy books, but it is in cinema that I find the true spark of passion and joy that can only come from knowing you are where you belong, you are in a place where everyone speaks your language. It’s in the shiver that runs down my spine when the camera slowly moves toward Harrison Ford’s face, as he studies the golden idol he is about to steal in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s in the way my heart breaks when Al Pacino opens his mouth and lets a lifetime of regret emerge as an animal howl at the end of The Godfather III. It’s Morgan Freeman’s eyes in Seven, the Orca sailing out to sea through the teeth of a shark in Jaws, or John Hurt starting to cough during dinner in Alien. It’s two hours in another world. It’s magic.

It started with my father. And, no doubt, some genetic predisposition, since my brother did not develop the same passion. From an early age, dad passed to me this love of cinema. I would sit and watch countless movies with him, while he would explain to me why certain shots were set up a certain way. How, for example, Hitchcock would often frame his characters claustrophobically, using stair banisters to simulate bars and signify their entrapment. Through years of viewing, I began to understand the language of cinema, recognising the style of certain directors, the signatures that appeared in their work. I would smile when Spielberg used a shadow because I could name all the other times he had done it. I recognised the way John Carpenter took the basic premise of his favourite movie, Rio Bravo, and made a series of brilliant horror movies from it. I saw the symbolism of oranges in the Godfather movies. No, honestly. Oranges. Oranges signify death. Watch all three movies again and you’ll see.

I’ve accumulated a vast wealth of, let’s face it, potentially useless movie knowledge. I mean, who cares if Scorsese slowed the frame rate of a certain zoom on Robert De Niro in Goodfellas, just ever so slightly, because it made him appear more menacing? Who cares that Hitchcock made Psycho in black and white because he didn’t have enough of a budget to make it in colour? I care. Because this is my passion.

I’m old enough to remember a time when movies were almost a once only experience. It was either a trip to the cinema or catch them on television, three years later. So, I look back very fondly at the early eighties, and the advent of home video. The sense of wonder I felt at the fact that it was now possible to own a movie, in a box with a cover, was absolutely overwhelming. The local video rental store became a holy place for me; thirteen years old and staring, wide-eyed, at the store walls, lined with movies. In boxes, with covers! I could choose one of those movies, take it home and watch it whenever I felt like it. It was incredible. And what a choice! At the cinema it was a choice of three. Here, I had a choice of hundreds. My appetite increased in direct proportion to the nourishment available.

Of course, when I try to convey that sense of awe to my son, himself now thirteen, I’m met with the same kind of amused condescension I used to give my dad when he told me how cool his Davy Crockett hat was when he was thirteen. The wheels keep turning.

Movies have been the one constant in my life. While other loves have come and gone, my love for film has remained, concrete and undiminished. This, I’m afraid, is carried through to my love of movie memorabilia. I’m not an insane collector. I can’t afford to be, but I do have my own little movie shrine set above the fire in my lounge. And on the walls. And a few other places. They say that men never truly put away their toys, they just move up to more expensive ones. For some it's cars or bikes, for some it's sports, and for some it's hi-tech gadgets. For me, it's movie memorabilia. Posters, books, and yes, toys. You can call them that, if you must. I mean, I don't run around playing with them. They just sit there, which to my mind puts them under the category of 'ornaments', right?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

I always had aspirations towards working in the movie industry. As a child, I vacillated between all manner of the more whimsical ambitions. Actor, stuntman, special effects, storyboard artist. Each month I moved onto a new career path. In my early thirties, I took the more pragmatic step of running my own video rental store. I hoped I could recapture the magic of those places from my childhood, but by that time the rental industry had become commonplace, corporate and regimented. The magic had gone. I was just a faceless guy in a T-shirt, handing out video cases to an undemanding public.

So, finally, I sat down one night and decided to start writing a movie. I don’t know why it had never occurred to me before, and I couldn’t tell you why I decided, on that particular night, to start. Something in my head just clicked. A few months later, I had my first completed screenplay, Dark Road. I immediately started another, and shortly after that, Dark Road was optioned. The option was dropped a few years later, but my fourth screenplay, Debunking Dad, won the BAFTA/Rocliffe New Writers Forum in 2008. There have been successes and failures, and the ultimate success has not yet been reached, but I’m confident I will get there.

Who knows? Maybe one day, a scene from one of my movies will give someone a shiver down their spine. Maybe one day, something I wrote will inspire someone else to do the same. And maybe, just maybe, there’ll be magic. And toys.

Sorry, I mean ornaments.

A Phone with a QWERTY Keyboard

I like my phone. My phone has a QWERTY keyboard. Granted, it's a very small QWERTY keyboard, but a QWERTY keyboard it most assuredly is.

I'm using it right now, to write this. Exciting stuff, eh? I've had the damn thing for about a year and this is the first time I've actually used it to write a blog. Sad, really, when you consider that the reason I chose a phone with a QWERTY keyboard was so I could write on the go, with the familiar key layout which would set me apart from all those QWERTY-less people who have to tap a number key several times to get the right letter.

As usual, however, my actions fall short of my aspirations and I pretty much use my wonderful phone to write texts, emails and the occasional Facebook update.

But no more. You are now witness to history in the making. A blog written on my QWERTY keyboard equipped phone. Sorry it's not longer and more interesting. My fingers are starting to ache from trying to type on these ridiculously small keys.

Who designed this thing, a fucking hamster?