Cultural Capital: oscars

Congratulations are in order to everyone involved with The King's Speech after its Oscar haul on Sunday. And commiserations to the losers, although at least David Fincher and his colleagues on The Social Network can content themselves with the certainty that they have made a film which will still be relished and scrutinised once The King's Speech has gone the ... read more

Above are Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, the two stars of The King's Speech. Director Tom Hooper spoke of a "triangle of man-love" between him and the two leads.

Colin Firth holds his Best Actor award.

In one of the night's few surprises, Tom Hooper (above) beat The Social Network's David Fincher in the Best Director category.

David Seidler (above, with guest) won the fourth award for The King's Speech, in the Best ... read more

James Cameron, director of Avatar, pretends to strangle his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker. Both were up for the Best Director and Best Picture awards. She pipped him to the post in both categories.

Here Bigelow is congratulated by the producer Greg Shapiro. She is the first woman ever to win in the Best Director category. ... read more

Awards fatigue, which descends around this time each year, has been alleviated slightly by last week's London Film Critics' Circle Awards. As a voting member, I was naturally thrilled to see the award for Film of the Year go to what I considered to be the right film -- A Prophet -- and even in the other categories there wasn't much to quibble with.

Let the Right One In and ... read more