Looks like the academy didn’t look too favourably on 13-oscar-nominated Benjamin Button’s de-aging-ness… Instead they favoured Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, it won Best Film, Best Director and six other little gold statues. Mickey Rourke didn’t get the Best Actor Oscar, despite winning Best Actor at most of the other awards shows, they gave it to the already Oscar-winning Sean Penn. Kate Winslet finally received an Oscar for which she started talking about shampoo, and to the surprise of no-one; Heath Ledger won a [...]

Today sees the announcements of the nominations for the 81st Academy Awards… and continuing the familiar trend for us UK folk, most of the Best Film nominations haven’t been released here yet. Speaking of Best Film, it’s nice to see the Academy haven’t got caught up too much in the (Dark) Knight Fever, giving most of its predictable nominations to its production values, rather than say… story. Though Heath’s Best Supporting Actor nod wasn’t surprising to anyone. Least of all, [...]

We film fans are suckers. We may leave the majority of our cinema visits thinking: “Why do I do this to myself?” and in the case of Indy IV: “How can I delete that from my memory?” – yet we still go back, time and time again, ice-cream / popcorn in hand… …grumbling about paying so much… trying graciously not to scream as the idiot behind you kicks your chair and fails so spectacularly to retrieve their last Malteser from [...]