Festivals

Read about the latest film festival news this year. Read all the reviews from the most promising screenings.

Slumdog Millionaire Won 8 Oscar Awards

The Oscar awards night of 2009 was the night of glory for Slumdog Millionaire. The film won 8 Oscar awards: Best Film Award, Best Director, Original Song, Best Sound Mixing, Best Adapted Screenplay – Simon Beaufoy, Cinematography – Anthony Dod Mantle, Best Film Editing and Best Original Song.

BAFTA Awards

BAFTA Nominations 2009

BAFTA is giving awards for people in film, television and video games and they’ve been doing this for 60 years now and they continue to go strong. They help support the people in the moving images art to continue developing better movies and shows for people to watch and enjoy.

The Orange British Academy Film Awards for 2009 will be held on Sunday, February 8th and it’s going to be the 12th year that BAFTA is in partnership with Orange to give a better awards night for all people to enjoy.

Full Battle Rattle, Unconventional Iraq War Documentary? Really?

There have been several documentaries recently about Iraq. It’s probably Michael Moore’s doing with Farenheit 911, which gave documentary star status and brought it closer to reality TV than quality film making. That sparked lots of low budget on line documentaries, some indeed involving the war in Iraq, and it also sparked a more general interest in documentaries, both on the side of the film makers, as well as that of  audiences.

Most documentaries dealing with this war (Farenheit 911, Iraq For Sale, Taxi To The Dark Side, etc.) may have small elements of comedy, in order to break the string of extremely serious issues being discussed, but for the most part are solemn affairs, dealing with death, lies and manipulation. Surprisingly enough, death, lies and manipulation (and the Iraq war) seem to be the main themes of Full Battle Rattle, however they make it funny. And poignant. But mostly funny.