So you’ve probably already found out who the Bafta 2010 winners and losers are but if you’re wondering what it all means and who really came out on top last night or if you didn’t get to see the ceremony here’s some analysis for you. The nights ceremony was hosted by BBC legend Jonathan Ross, who is leaving the BBC later in the year although he has said he would like to carry on presenting awards ceremonies like this. However after last nights performance its questionable whether he’ll be wanted as despite having written quite a lot of gags Wossy failed to rouse a hearty laugh from the crowd all night as his jokes simply weren’t up to his usual standard for some unknown reason. Anyway on to the awards….
Bigelow Vs Cameron – The battle of the exes
Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker was last nights clear winner as it got 6 gongs over Avatar’s measly 2. The Hurt Locker was always going to win Best Director as Bigelow has already picked up tens of best director awards over the other films in previous ceremonies, including the all important DGA (Directors Guild of America) Best Director gong, whose winner has nearly always then gone on to win the directing Oscar so she’s a certain in come March in LA as well. Most of the other awards won by the film (Best Film, Editing, Sound, Cinematography) were a close call but always between Avatar and itself but The Hurt Locker‘s most surprising win was for Best Original Screenplay. Up against such strong screenplays as A Serious Man and Inglourious Basterds in other awards The Hurt Lockers quite limited screenplay has usually lost out so its a bit surprising this didn’t go to the Coen’s or Tarantino. Meanwhile the two awards Avatar did manage to win were all related to the films best aspect, its visual style and were totally deserving – it received both the Production Design and Special Visual Effects awards.
Surprise Winners
For me there were two main category surprise winners. Firstly in the Best Actor category. Jeff Bridges has collected this already several times for his role in Crazy Heart, and is another cert for the Oscars but last night the award went to Colin Firth for A Single Man. The reasoning here is presumable because this is the Bafta’s the British voters tend to prefer British actors and although Firth is deserving I won’t be expecting him to beat Bridges in any other ceremonies. The other slight surprise for me was that A Prophet won the Best Film not in the English Language over the usual winner The White Ribbon, Although there both superb quality films Haneke’s White Ribbon has usually been voted above A Prophet in most award votes up until now so makes the Oscar win for Haneke look a lot more doubtful.
Obvious Winners
Most of the remaining awards had obvious favourites, usually because the nominees have already picked up so many awards against the same candidates. Carey Mulligan won Best Actress for An Education and was the clear favourite, but be aware that if Sandra Bullocks role in The Blind Side had been eligible Mulligan would almost definitely have lost out to her so this is almost a win by default. The supporting actor for Christopher Waltz in Inglourious Basterds and Supporting Actress for Mo’Nique in Precious were among some of the most obvious winners as they add these awards to their collection of statuettes with the same title. Up for Best Animation was also a clear cut choice (although it also won the Best Music award where there was no clear frontrunner expect perhaps the country music based Crazy Heart). Fish Tank won the Outstanding British film award and came as no surprise after it picked up 4 awards at last week’s London Critics’ Circle bash. Up in the Air has also won Best Adapted Screenplay so many times it’s a surprise the other nominees even bothered to turn up. The other main battle of the ceremonies was between The Young Victoria and Coco Before Chanel fighting over Best Costume Design and Make up and Hair, and these two seem to take in turns to pick up similar awards across the globe as last night both the awards went to The Young Victoria.
Presenters
All of the awards were hosted by celebrity presenters but they all seemed to be suffering from the problem that the teleprompter was too far away from them. Claire Danes was visibly squinting and Noel Clarke had to actually get his glasses out of his jacket to be able to see it. As they were all trying so hard to read their words this made their reading so slow it became slightly ridiculous, especially when a rambling Dustin Hoffman presented the Best Film Award. There were no real embarrassing moments here and the presenter who got the biggest laugh was when Noel Clarke presented the Orange Rising Star Award to Kristen Stewart (no surprise here as this award is voted for by the public by text and we all know that Twilight fans are at the perfect age to be wasting their text message allowances) he managed to include the titles of all the nominees films in his speech quite cleverly. The most cringeworthy presenter was certainly Rupert Everett who had put on his poshest British accent for the night, and he even sounded much more regal than Prince William who appeared later to introduce Vanessa Redgrave as the recipient of the Bafta fellowship!
Acceptance Speeches
There was one big crier of the night and that was Duncan Jones, who received the Outstanding Debut by a British director, writer or producer Award for Moon. The best speech came from Colin Firth who told a story about how he was about to turn down the part which won him the award but was interrupted by a man who came to repair his fridge and thanked him for the award. The only winner who wasn’t present to collect their award was Mo’nique and the award was instead collected by Precious’ director Lee Daniels although he didn’t explain Mo’Niques absence at all.
So its all over for another year but we’ve still got the Oscars to come so expect more tears and dramas come March!
