This is the Neeewwwws

How refreshing, to come into contact with your heroes and not have to endure the metaphorical equivalent of a custard pie in the face. I had spoken to a few journalists before the appearance of Chris Morris at the Bradford International Film Festival on Thursday who had told me that, in the past and on numerous occasions, Morris was a loose canon in interviews, unpredictable. The rumour was that Morris wouldn’t even attend the festival as himself, instead donning the costume of a middle aged woman and conducting the whole ceremony in character. Absurd, yes, but not completely beyond the realms of possibility. This is the same man who sabotaged his own career at BBC Radio Bristol by pumping helium into the newsroom.

Morris was in town for the UK premiere of his new and fairly unique jihadist comedy Four Lions, and upon arriving on the red carpet, I bump into friends Larry and Paul, who have their own show on the commercial Leeds station Radio Aire. (Larry, incidentally, was half way through a 24 hour charity broadcast at the time for Magic, designed to raise money for the station’s Cash for Kids foundation, and his ability to be coherent after such a length of time without sleep is truly commendable, especially considering that most of this time was being spent live on air). We quickly run through a few questions to ask Morris, the most obvious ones being, “What is the letter of the law?” and, one of my favourites, “Do you think people spend too long saying things?”

Of course that kind of behaviour (ie. quoting ‘The Day Today’) would really piss you off after a while, which is no wonder why Morris is rarely seen giving interviews. Actually, let’s rephrase that, he’s rarely seen at all. Which is why the prospect of 15 minutes, one to one, with the man himself seemed unlikely. And it was, because the interview was cancelled, and we ended up loitering on the red carpet like scornful lovers after being stood up on a date.

But Morris did appear, both to introduce the film and for an interview at the end of the screening. The film is pure farce, as hilariously acerbic and on-the-button as Morris’ most potent work, even if it’s bumbling bombers plot does slightly confuse itself between actually making a point and relentlessly hammering at your funny bone. Morris was erudite, funny and intelligent when it came to explaining the movie, merely feet away from my seat on the front row. Does he feel that the film is an insult is Islam? “I would like someone who actually thinks that to ask me that question.” Could the Americans get away with making a comedy about terrorism? “They have. Did you not see United 93?” Is it right to make a comedy about something so real as home grown Islamic fundamentalism? In preparation for answering this one, Morris met relatives of the victims of the 7/7 bombings (of which the film is most closely associated, from the homemade bombs to the northern accents) and discovered that, of the few he did meet, overall consensus was one of apathy, just “as long as it’s done well.”

I have written a more detailed review here for Leeds Guide magazine (http://www.leedsguide.co.uk/review/film-review/four-lions/14035), but suffice to say that the film went down a treat in Bradford. Watching it with a mostly Asian audience (the screening included a break for pray, which is the first time I have experienced this in a cinema), the film is broad and far from a slight against Islam: in fact, I would go so far to say that I’m yet to see a more accurate, detailed look at what it must be like to be a young, disaffected, second generation British Muslim living in the UK today. It’s as relevant as East is East, and a lot funnier.

The knives will be out for Morris (again) over this one - mostly by those folks who haven’t actually seen it yet - but you have to commend him on being brave enough to have even made the film in the first place. He seemed humbled when facing his audience, and in case you’re wondering, no, he wasn’t in drag: a mop of curly hair, skinny jeans and worker boots make him look evidently more fashionable than most men approaching 50, especially when fellow script writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong join him on stage, both formidable comedic talents, but practically crusty by comparison.


I don’t think I’ll be spending money to read the rest of the content on the Times website; the BBC and Guardian tend to be my personal favourites, and they’re free. For the time being, of course, unless Murdoch gets his own way which, as we know, he normally does. After all, we’ll be seeing the BBC limit their online funding by 25% in the next few years, thus purposely downgrading their service for reasons that seem ultimately quite baffling: is it to pre-empt and tally favour with a new government who will probably hit the license fee pretty hard when they come to power? Or perhaps it really is to do with the Beeb’s current monopolising of the market, thus making it unfair for private companies and competition to flourish in a rapidly commercialised broadband environment? If the comment and analysis that you find in the Times is your favourite source of journalistic nourishment, then why shouldn’t you pay for it, like you would a newspaper?

With newspapers now being handed out on street corners, the idea of the so-called ‘fourth estate’ being as viable a business as it once was has become a nonsense, it is a false economy, and who can blame those media men for trying to find a quick buck in the millions that have already been lost. Which is why the Times, I fear, is only the first in a long line of websites that will start to charge for their content, and this could indelibly alter the way we read and interpret the news in the future.

Of course if I started charging for these Toxic Math updates, just think of the routes of expansion open to me on the web today: regularly updated newsletters to always keep you in the loop, instant messaging to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. I’m sure my advertisers could slip in discounted products and giveaways for my most valued customers. But then you’ll probably delete my iPhone app when you get a bit bored and something better comes along, like a virtual online toilet which allows you to take a piss so you don’t have to physically use the bathroom anymore, or something. We‘re a fickle lot these days, and therein lies the problem - just ask Bebo, just ask Yahoo, just ask MySpace, still ploughing on but usurped by things that we hold with a much greater short term value.


I thought this was a nice story to follow on from my blog a few weeks back regarding Mother’s Day, and the film Motherhood starring Uma Thurman, which appears to have only made £88 in its opening weekend. Of course, there are numerous reasons for why something like this could have happened, far above and beyond a film just being really, really bad - because Motherhood isn’t actually that bad at all, and I know this because I appear to be have been one of only a handful of people in the country to have seen it. The marketing for it was misleading, focusing more on the knockabout comedic elements of the movie and the chaos of controlling pesky children rather than the more introspective look of a young career woman struggling to find purpose within the traditional family unit. That’s what they should have done, and I guess only sending it to a few selected Apollo cinemas didn’t help much either. Anyway, here’s the link, read and LOL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/26/uma-thurman-motherhood-flop

Four Eyes Only

A quick comment regarding 3D films. They're everywhere at the moment and, if the line up of summer blockbusters are anything to go by, there seems to be no end to this pandemic. I immensely enjoyed Tim Burton’s deranged yet wholesome take on Alice in Wonderland, although I must admit to growing increasingly weary of all the 3D effects which, if anything, causes more of a strain than a spectacle.

Is it just me? Avatar was excruciating, too, but largely due to being hideously long. Personally, I can’t imagine any film that would actually be improved by being in 3D. Alice would be just as enjoyable without having to don large horn rimmed geek specs, and, yes, it’s certainly better than the green and red frames that everyone used about 50 years ago, but let's be honest, this special effect doesn’t help to make films look any more real at all. So I hope this stops soon, and I haven't even started on the prices: at a 3D screening of Disney’s Up a few months ago in London, two tickets came to £24. I mean, honestly.


I’m a stickler for order and planning, but can occasionally do something quite spontaneously that surprises even myself.

Thursday saw the launch of this year’s Bradford International Film Festival, now in its 16th year, and by all accounts this one looks set to trump even the efforts of the recent Leeds International Film Festival last November. Big names are crucial at these things: there are retrospectives with Imelda Staunton and John Hurt, who, rumour has it, knows someone on the board and clearly wasn’t up to much at the weekend, not to mention evenings with Fernando Meirelles, Jenny Agutter and Chris Morris.

The movie chosen for the glitzy red carpet launch was Ian Fitzgibbon’s Perrier’s Bounty, a good natured Irish crime comedy of the Guy Ritchie variety which, at least, is better than anything Ritchie has ever done. The cast were absent along with the director, but the film‘s producer Stephen Woolley was there and he gave a polite introduction, explaining how he‘d "left his suit on the train", which seems now like an implausible excuse.

After the screening and with handfuls of cheap champagne and canapés (including miniature Yorkshire favourites like fish and chips and, bless, toad in the hole), we got talking to a slightly inebriated film scholar, who turned out to be the head of the National Film and Television School, Nik Powell. We smoked his menthol cigarettes before, low and behold, Stephen Woolley approaches us and we shake hands. Powell is staying with Woolley in Bradford for the night and asks if we fancy sharing a cab to grab drink in their bar. And feeling spontaneous: “yes, that would be lovely.”

It was a delightful evening full of wine and film talk, in which we discussed favourite movies growing up (The Princess Bride, of course), the merits of British cinema and why we haven’t made a decent British pub movie - but what about Shaun of the Dead, I proffered? Also in attendance was Steve Abbott, chair of Screen Yorkshire who is mostly famous for working with the Monty Python team, producing movies like A Fish Called Wanda and Brassed Off and was very close friends with, it turns out, George Harrison.

I should mention at this juncture that, like most journalists, I work better in the secure environment of procedure, and have been lucky enough to be involved in conversations with some quite prominent figures, from politicians to celebrities, but always with a trusty and dependable arsenal at my disposal: a Dictaphone, a notebook and, as is always the case, a scheduled allotted time. This is what I mean by order and planning: it’s about control, it’s about calling the shots, and it explains why journalists are usually pricks. Without these defences, and in certain social situations - the high pressure ones where you want to be both respected and slightly aloof but at the same time - sometimes the gravitas of the situation can take hold, you panic, and sit in the corner mumbling to nobody while the conversation passes you by. I’m no Winston Churchill and I certainly don’t profess to being a great wit or anything, but I’d like to think that I can hold my own while conversing with just about anyone, whether the talk is being recorded or not. (Although I could tell you a story about being quite embarrassingly stumped for words when meeting the beautiful Nell McAndrew who, I might add, was only wearing her pyjamas at the time, but, alas, that is for a completely different occasion.)

So when a rather awestruck journalist, himself a script writer in the process of pitching to Nicolas Roeg, asked me on the night, “you do realise who these people are, don‘t you?” I shrugged and said confidently, why yes, of course. But it’s worth clarifying these things. So I Google’ed Stephen Woolley when I got back into the office the next day, possibly still a bit drunk. And, for your information: Stephen Woolley worked with director Neil Jordan on Oscar nominated films like The Crying Game and Interview with the Vampire, he managed the Scala Theatre in north London, has directed his own features, most recently the Brian Jones biopic Stoned, as well as produced films like Fever Pitch, Mona Lisa, Michael Collins and many, many more. I attach a picture of him to this blog purely as a way of realising just who these people are.


The papers are already setting out their biased news agenda as we edge ever more closely to an election. Elections, more than decades, help to define eras. The contrast between Major and Blair couldn’t have been more apparent; the sleaze and loud shirts of the Tory 90s, and the slick media operation of Blair’s terrorised nu-millennia. Chances are David Cameron will win, if you believe the 'man on the street', but there are no clear cut winners and a judgement is still too early to call.

Traditionally, of course, the Tories shoot themselves in the foot in the run up to elections, like Amanda Platell’s ill-advised press campaign for William Hague which had a clearly intelligent politician look so much like a pre-pubescent lummox that there must have been calls of sabotage back at Tory HQ, thinking that maybe Platell was being slipped fivers from John Prescott to make Hague look like an even bigger tit.

But now we’re seeing the more personalised side of politics, clearly stolen, like most things, from America, which attempts to make celebrities out of our politicians, resulting in really hideous things, like Gordon Brown being interviewed by Piers Morgan, and their wives and children being paraded before the public to discuss how great they are at cleaning the kitchen and playing football. Why not be done with it and just stick Brown in a military style power jacket and have him dancing like Cheryl Cole on 'Sport Relief'?

If Cameron is the equivalent of Blair in this election, then surely Brown is Major - both are recession hit, both inheriting conflicts in the Middle East and both, although this is probably just speculation, tuck their shirt into their underpants. That was never proven, by the way, despite what some lobby journalists have since commented, but surely the image goes a long way to explaining how even minute details of a politician’s life can be skewed, interpreted, spun out of control and eventually cost elections.

So whoever wins, this clearly isn’t going to be a clean fight.

Word To Your Mother

Hurray for our mothers, who will no doubt be unwrapping their Engelbert Humperdinck CDs and being treated to vaguely patronising lunches on this day, of all days, Mother’s Day. Mine lives in Spain and I rarely get the chance to see her unless it’s through the pixelated lens of a cheap webcam. I love her dearly, though, and miss her company a lot: it’s probably down to her sheer passion for writing that got me scribbling away in the first place. All I seem to have offered in return is debt and dirty washing. Who’d have kids, right?

There is a new film coming out called Motherhood that tackles this very question. Uma Thurman plays a New York urban mommy juggling two small children while barely finding enough time to update her blog - think Sex and the City but with kids. She is frayed, scatty and constantly on the brink of a complete emotional breakdown. It’s a pretty decent stab at an adult family comedy and is essentially about finding harmony and balance in a busy, chaotic world where mothers seem to adhere to somewhat self-imposed pressures of being everything to all people: a doting parent, chief organiser, caretaker, inspiration for her kids as well as stern matriarch and, when daddy comes home, a promiscuous partner. It’s a lot to cram into one day, but despite the film’s smug snapshot of contemporary motherhood, I don’t think that the emotional burdens of raising children have altered too much. What clearly has changed is the greater pressure today for career mothers to excel in their work while still maintaining a good home life balance. My Mum stayed at home to raise a family until she felt ready to go back into work, but not every mother can afford such luxuries, particularly young families who have yet to have an opportunity to get a substantial hold on the career ladder.

Knowing my mum she would probably say that it was much easier raising kids when she was younger, which, if she says so, is probably true. After all, mother knows best.


The new Gorillaz album is superb. I have a habit of changing my Favourite Record of the Year So Far almost weekly, but I might stick with this one. Damon Albarn is clearly a genius. His third simian side project leaps from a poppy throwback synth sound to collaborative efforts with some of the best names in hip-hop (Snoop Dogg, Mos Def and Kano) and a plethora of musical legends (Lou Reed, Mark E Smith, Bobby Womack) to create a refined sound that’s altogether selfless, contemporary and progressive. And this is the same kid who wrote ‘Girls and Boys’. Buy it now. Right now.


I’m not sure what to make of this current trend for abbreviations. Jedward are to blame, but at least that worked as a joke, as the off-key karaoke twins were practically indistinguishable in both looks and talent. In fact, I blame the media portrayal of shows like The X Factor which have acted to popularise the trend: SuBo (Susan Boyle), PieMo (Piers Morgan), SiCo (Simon Cowell). This has now, annoyingly, moved into politics. In yesterday’s Guardian I read some more rather dubious work: you couldn’t move for references to ‘SamCam’ on an article referring to David Cameron’s wife, Samantha Cameron. I’m looking forward to the electoral candidate debates on TV - when GorBro, DC and Cleggo will render Paxo and co into LOLing, mumbling press idiots, talking in Tweets rather than proper words. Can this nonsense stop now, please?


I’ve always been slightly in love with Billie Piper. She’s from Swindon, you know. We were born in the very same hospital. If it wasn’t for the two year age gap, I like to imagine that we might have met after school once, or got drunk in an alleyway before heading to the Mission nightclub, maybe share a kebab on the way home.

Despite what could have been, I’ve always followed her career intently, which even meant sitting through the first series of ‘Secret Diaries of a Call Girl’, despite it being quite awful. (An oddly hypocritical show, that one, which offers about as much insight into prostitution as a copy of Swank magazine). She’s now an actress of considerable talent, and quite brilliant in Kay Mellor’s new Leeds-based, two-part TV drama ‘A Passionate Woman’. It will be broadcast in April, but luckily the BBC treated guests to a very special preview screening in Leeds at the Hyde Park Picture House.

In an interview after the screening, Mellor was quite teary eyed when discussing the film with ‘Look North’ presenter Christa Ackroyd. It is based on her mother’s ill-fated affair with a young Polish immigrant and set in a 1950s version of Leeds. Billie plays Mellor’s mother as a young, excitable yet sexually repressive housewife in the first part and Sue Johnston takes over in the follow up. The program is filmed in Leeds at various locations including the Town Hall, Roundhay Park and, of course, the Hyde Park Picture House, and it is a testament to the quality invested in the BBC Drama department. And I’m pleased to say that for a Swindon girl, Billie’s grasp of the northern accent is faultless. But as I said, I might be slightly in love.


Another week and, sorry, another Lady Gaga story. There was an awful lot of fuss regarding her new video with Beyonce Knowles (receiving half a million hits within the first 12 hours) - a 9 minute film to promote Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke and a rather limp song called ‘Telephone’, which drew slightly presumptuous comparisons to the ‘Thriller’ video for being the Best Music Video Of All Time, or something equally absurd. It’s not, of course, but thank God for Gaga and completely raising the bar so high that even Beyonce Knowles can't keep up, and she’s actually in the bloody thing.

It’s probably the closest thing to actually wandering around Lady Gaga’s head, with so many great bits to choose from: starting with Gaga’s incarceration and subsequent strip search (“I told you she doesn’t have a dick”), to the lesbian kissing while wearing sunglasses strapped with lit cigarettes (this must have been a continuity nightmare), then Beyonce crops up like a dominatrix to spike the drink of rapper Tyrese (“I knew you’d take all my honey, you selfish motherfucker”) and the two ride out in the Pussy Wagon from Kill Bill in a suicidal homage to Thelma and Louise. It’s certainly an outrageous approach and really great fun. Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ95z6ywcBY


The more observant of you would have noticed that out of my six Oscar predictions from last week, I managed to get four correct. Thank you. I’d like to thank God and my agent.

The two I got wrong seem to have stemmed from my own cynicism, but clearly I failed to give the Academy even half as much credit, feeling that they would plump for the baggy, bogged-down CGI master-trump Avatar over Kathryn Bigelow’s tense Iraq war film The Hurt Locker. Luckily, I was wrong, and James Cameron, despite spending the GDP of a small country on his 3D Smurfs-at-war film, had to settle for a few prizes for special effects.

The ceremony received complaints for being a bit of a yawn, but then it is every year. It’s too formal, and the comedy exuberance of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin couldn’t have helped. They should just get Chris Rock to do it every year. “Our next presenter is the first woman to ever breast-feed an Apple… Gwyneth Paltrow.” Ba-doom!

Vocal Point

The cultural delights on offer in Leeds never fail to surprise me. Having enjoyed Northern Ballet Theatre’s updated version of Romeo & Juliet, we were lucky enough to pop across to the Howard Assembly Rooms to catch the last day of Janet Cardiff’s rather stirring sound installation ‘Voices: A Forty Part Motet’. Forty individual speakers magnificently capture the solo intricacies involved in Thomas Tallis’ piece ‘Spem in alium’, originally designed for eight choirs of five voices. Sit, or lie (as many visitors do) in the middle and it is the closest thing, I can only imagine, to being within the booming epicentre of a real choir. If you chose to inspect individual speakers, you can not only grasp the intricate measure and tonal perfection of each voice, but also, if you catch their idle chatter before the piece begins, you can even hear them cough, advise and talk to one another. An invigorating experience, I hope it comes back.

As for the ballet, I was amazed to discover that the Northern Ballet Theatre - based in Leeds and possibly the country’s most pre-eminent dance company spanning a globe-trotting forty years - prepare for their next ballet while simultaneously performing their current one. Not only that, but the performers mix up the roles, so depending on which performance you see, my Mercutio could be your Romeo. I guess this helps to balance what must be a rather punishing schedule, and goes a long way to understanding the abundance of talent there is within the company.


I feel that I should jump to the defence of Lady Gaga, not just because she’s clearly ace and possibly the most interesting thing to happen to pop music since Madonna did all that monochrome stuff during her Exotica period, but mainly because some slightly misguided scribes have really been sticking the Stilettos in of late. Apart from a couple of good tracks, I don’t really get Ms Gaga’s musical appeal, but I certainly get everything else: the outlandish “oh no she didn’t” get up, enough to make Liberace look like a soiled tramp, and her equally cryptic and compelling persona, brilliantly personified in her teacup sketch on ‘Friday Night with Jonathan Ross', which saw the TV host squirm in his seat and first enamoured this batty woman into all of our humdrum British hearts.

But “so much for Lady Gaga’s feminist credentials”, says Hermione Hoby in last Sunday’s Observer, who was heartbroken to find Gaga cupping her bosom in a topless photo shoot for Q magazine. Before I get into questioning what on earth a once Britpop-championing institution like Q is doing putting pop’s first Lady on their cover (following on from a previous issue's dubious choice of a black leather porcupine-esque Cheryl Cole with the caption “Cheryl rocks” - like, what the hell is happening here?), it’s the misogynistic lads mag appeal that Hoby is taking offence too, and more specifically, that her “jutted hip, parted lips and vacuous expression tick the remaining boxes that constitute the mainstream image of sexy.”

But I don’t think Hoby is giving Gaga even half as much credit. Someone who went out in Knightsbridge the other day wearing a lobster on her head and a transparent nurse outfit with electrical tape over her nipples is evidently someone who is challenging “the mainstream image of sexy” and this is something that she has done from the start - clearly Hoby must have held her in much higher feminist regard beforehand, you know, when she did all those gigs in nothing but a turquoise leotard. And it’s quite impossible to clearly define someone like Gaga who goes out her way to avoid "ticking the boxes": yes, she’s clearly topless on the cover of this month’s Q, but I’m pretty sure her elongated fingers are down the front of her trousers, producing a dildo-shaped dong in her pants. Well, you certainly won’t find that on the front of Nuts magazine, that’s all I’m saying. Perhaps in Hoby’s too-quick-to-judge riposte she may have slightly missed the point. Here's the original article anyway: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/feb/28/lady-gaga-feminist-credentials.


In Radio Head: Up and Down the Dial of British Radio, John Osborne sums up BBC 6 Music as bridging the gap between people who feel too old for Radio 1, but not yet old enough for Radio 2. People like me, basically. It plays an eclectic mix of mostly great music from some of the country's best DJs, and George Lamb. As well as the brilliant Adam and Joe, there is also Steve Lamacq, Gideon Coe, Stuart Maconie, Lauren Laverne: all exceptional talent who clearly revel in working within an environment that doesn't seem to be too hung up on playlists or minding your manners.

DJs of this calibre are hardly going to be left homeless in a year's time when the station is set to be decommissioned, but I find it hard to believe that these personalities will suddenly be happy to start hawking the latest Taylor Swift single when they've been able to play the Pixies for the past few years. Which makes the whole decision of cutting 6 Music and BBC Asian Network (not to mention a vast percentage of the BBC's online content) to focus more on their main radio stations (that’s Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) even more perplexing. So, let me get this right, in order to be more brilliant, the BBC is cutting things that are already brilliant? Eh?

The arguments in favour of this decision talk of the benefits for commercial radio, and given that the BBC own so much of the radio pie their competitors have to fight for the remaining slices. This is felt more at a regional level, where commercial stations are really struggling. But who is saying that there needs to be a limit on these things? Digital stations and the internet has blown radio wide open. Surely now only the best radio stations with the best content and a complete understanding of their market will be sure to survive. This again makes the elbowing of 6 Music and BBC Asian Network even more confusing. Being so niche, I hardly think that stations like Virgin and Magic are going to benefit from their absence whatsoever. Get rid of the local stations and, yes, maybe they would.

Surely in this global audio market where it is very easy people to listen to what is being broadcast right now from Iraq to Israel, from Norwich to Nebraska, the fact that the Beeb should be at their best is even more relevant, not downsizing in an attempt to filter their content. In Radio Head, Osborne asks the radio critic for the 'Radio Times', Jane Anderson, whether there are too many radio station. "That's like saying there are too many books." So if this was merely a cost-cutting exercise, can't we just assume that they will spend the money improving stations that are already fine as they are? Maybe Radio 2 can fill the 6 Music void and I'm just getting in a bit of tizz over nothing. But I find it very hard to imagine Steve Wright discussing the importance of The Wedding Present before spinning the new Peaches single.


I managed to humiliate myself quite convincingly on BBC Leeds the other day, where I present a 20 minute, fortnightly look at the new cinematic and DVD releases. An impromptu Oscar-related quiz occurred after ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ by Van Morrison, and I lost to Johnny I’Anson’s ever-pleasant co-host Isma Almas. For someone who is recruited for their knowledge of film, this is humiliating to say the least. I’ve always watched people squirm under the pressure of answering seemingly redundant questions on TV shows normally presented by people like Ant and Dec and Dale Winton and yelling at the screen for knowing the answers to the easiest of questions, but I have now developed renewed sympathy for the sort of pressure these people must be under.

So I’ll offer my predictions for tonight’s Academy Awards, which I’ll be watching, more for revision purposes than entertainment. And if any of them are indeed correct, try not to act too surprised.

Best Picture
My choice: The Hurt Locker - A real seat-of-the-pants nerve jangler set during the Iraq war which, for such a relevant concept, side steps political comment in favour of the psychological repercussions of conflict and the relationship between recruits.
And the Oscar goes to… Avatar - For costing so much bloody money

Best Actor
My choice: Colin Firth - Sensitive, intelligent, well-measured and well-tailored performance in A Single Man from an actor who hardens his synonymously wet Brit routine into something altogether more troubling.
And the Oscar goes to… Jeff Bridges - He’s an all round good egg and plays his own country music.

Best Actress My choice: Carey Mulligan - Bolstered by a Nick Hornby script for An Education, she’s a newbie with plenty of charm and talent, but perhaps an Oscar is stretching it a bit.
And the Oscar goes to… Sandra Bullock - Have you heard her Texan accent? That ought to just about tip it.

Best Supporting Actor
My choice: Christoph Waltz - For being the most sublimely creepy Nazi since that guy who’s face came off at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, he was easily the best thing in Tarantino’s absurdist war comedy.
And the Oscar goes to… Christoph Waltz - Easily, I should imagine.

Best Supporting Actress My choice: Mo’Nique - She’s a stand up comedian, believe it or not - her snarling, aggressive turn as the mother of Precious in Lee Daniels’ intense poverty piece is just about as bad as a mother can get.
And the Oscar goes to… Mo’Nique - And she doesn’t even plan on shaving her legs.

Best Director My choice: Kathryn Bigelow - For making great use of location, timing, and maintaining a knife-edge approach to suspense instead of investing all energy into bangs and whistles. Unlike her ex-husband, James Cameron, who will win this one easily.
And the Oscar goes to… James Cameron - He did spend a hell of a lot money.