Word: britishers
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Pity the poor BAFTAs. For a moment there, it looked like the annual awards of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts were going to be the only celebration of film that mattered this season. The U.S. writers' strike had already reduced the Golden Globes to a glorified checklist, and as long as negotiations were a standoff, the Oscars were no sure thing, either. Yes, the Screen Actors Guild awards had gone ahead as planned, but that doesn't resonate much beyond U.S. borders: a SAG award gets you back pats from showbiz pals, but it won't sell...
...trouble is, all this just feels like a way to pass the time until the Big Day. The British Academy already tried to make the awards more relevant by moving them from a few weeks after the Academy Awards to a few weeks before, but with the Oscar voting all wrapped up and nothing left for Hollywood to do but wait to see who wins, the BAFTAs still come off as the Almost Oscars. Why not move the BAFTAs to a slot before the Oscar voting deadline? That way there's at least a chance that what happens...
...while the ceremony was a disappointment, the BAFTA awards themselves could teach the Oscars a thing or two about the big, wide world of film. As the American Academy slowly, begrudgingly learns to accept the fact that other countries make great movies too, the British Academy has fully embraced the idea that all cinema is world cinema and that some of the best films are made in places where English is the foreign language. So France's La Vie En Rose and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Germany's The Lives of Others, and The Kite Runner, with most...
...Bauby's autobiography, beat out the screen version of Ian McEwan's Atonement for best adapted screenplay. And how newcomer Marion Cotillard - who played Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose - nabbed the best actress award that was all but already on Julie Christie's mantelpiece. The upset has British awards-watchers seething and might have left Christie a little peeved, too: on Monday morning she was quoted in the free daily Metro calling the BAFTAs "a night for the media to fill gaps." And the Almost Oscar Goes...
...night last fall, as I sat in a lecture hall watching a documentary for my history class about British human rights abuses in colonial Kenya, I was struck by a familiar feeling of hopelessness. I saw myself and my peers leaving our neon green seats of Science Center E, knowing that each of us would snap back into our lives at Harvard, complete with dining-hall menus and shuttle schedules, and leave the somber thoughts of detention camps behind...