Film Awards Season

- "Hunger" by Steve McQueen won the "Novello" award for best first film at the Baftas. Previously, the film had won the Camera d'Or at Cannes, and the Discovery Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It's about Bobby Sands and the 1981 hunger strike in Belfast's Maze Prison.

- We had a joint social with the Uni of Warwick Young Greens last week, and we went to see "Milk" at the Warwick Arts Centre. I've been to San Francisco twice (1995 and 1997), and it was nice to see a recreation of the 1970's Castro. Sean Penn really disappeared into the lead role, and Emile Hirsch was rather good as Cleve Jones. "I faked a lung disease to get out of P.E. So what? What are you, some kind of street shrink?" "Sometimes." Ben Summerskill, the chief exec of Stonewall, gave a film review in the Guardian. It's up for best actor, best director, best picture, and best supporting actor (Josh Brolin, as Dan White, the fellow city councillor who kills Milk and the mayor) at the Oscars. Click here for a view that says the film sanitises his life.

- It's always interesting to see which films get nominated for best documentary short and feature at the Oscars. The topics this year: MLK's assasination, 14-acre community gardens in Los Angeles, the aftermath of Katrina, and the photographing of people on their way to Khmer Rouge death camps.