Here we have the BAFTAS 2021 or, on long, the British Academy Film Awards (the T is indeed misleading there) and this was just on the other day, so still really new and fresh. The entire thing ran for 115 minutes, so stayed slightly under the two-hour mark, but this does not yet include commercial breaks, so a bit longer probably the actual broadcast, even if somehow I read this was only two hours long, which would be minimal. Not sure what is accurate here, but not too important either. I will just do some brainstorming now, not particularly chronological, but everything that comes to mind what I liked about the show and what I didn't like. Let's start with the two hosts: Edith Bowman and Dermot O'Leary were featured a lot here and had a great deal of screen time. They did nothing for me. I mean Stephen Fry as host is a once-in-a-lifetime thingey and it would be unfair to expect something or somebody like him every awards show, every BAFTA edition, but I cannot believe they did not find anybody better than these two. The elderly woman who replaced Fry not too long ago was already not a revelation, but this duo we had here was utterly uninspired and bland. Bowman no clue what she is famous for, probably people in britain know her and Dermot O'Leary I see mostly worked on X Factor, one of a dozen (mostly) music casting shows out there. I think it's self-explanatory they got him here. Shameful stuff really, especially because the BAFTAs are always kinda linked to the British monarchy, which of course is not remotely the case for the Oscars or so, so you expect a little more dignity here, but with these hosts not a chance. Speaking of British monarchy, this took place right after the death of the Queen's husband and this is referenced early on and also in a tasteful manner later on by the Supporting Actress winner.
So let's focus a bit on the winners now and as we just mentioned her already said Korean actress from the film Minari was one of the positive moments that night, even if I would have been fine with Bakalova winning as well. She seemed to be the frontrunner this awards season, but never really broke through, so after the SAG Awards awarding the Minari actress and now the BAFTAs as well, it's probably safe to say that Bakalova winning the Oscar would be a fairly big surprise. On the male side, the supporting actor race could not be any more decided. Kaluuya is pretty much through, so the trend continues that has Black actors winning there. He has won every big precursor basically. I have not seen the film, so I won't be a judge, but generally I don't think Kaluuya is a gifted actor, so I would be surprised if he blows me away. I also still see it critical that he praises the man he plays. I mean he was a Black Panthers leader if I am not mistaken and nu neutral observer can deny they were a radical terrorist group, so it's fairly shameful, but with the current take on race and ethnicities in the general media he is getting away with it. Lead acting categories were two surprises. At least in terms of the winners. It's clear the Brits love Anthony Hopkins, but I did not think they'd love him enough to give him the win over Boseman. Still Boseman stays the big Oscar favorite. Lead actress is fairly open again. McDormand would probably be the safe win hadn't she just won her second relatively recently. But Nomadland comfortably in the lead for Best Picture and this BAFTA win for McDormand increase her Oscar chances again as well. There are maybe four people who all have a chance as they all have taken one major precursor. We will see. As long as Viola Davis does not win her second, I'm pretty fine with it. I would still be happy to see Mulligan win, but McDormand would be alright as well. Puty though we did not get any BAFTA speeches from McDormand and Hopkins.
Speaking of the lead actress category, this was nonetheless one of the biggest embarrassments of the night. It seems they adjusted the rules to an extent now when detemining the nominees where every non-Black (especially White) actress has a really hard time to get in. I mean it's really on the embarrassing side that three or four Black actresses were nominated here over Carey Mulligan. Over Olivia Colman. And even over Viola Davis ironically. I have no clue what happened for this set of nominees to get in, but the BAFTAs are not doing themselves any favor for sure if they keep going with this nomination process. In my opinion, there should be no regulations at all when it comes to helping minorities to get nominated. Either they deliver through their performances or they don't. It's all about acting, about the talent and I think that it is a myth that old White men are the reason why there is no real diversity. The only thing worse than no diversity is if we adjust the rules in a way that guarantees diversity because this would be discrimination as well and it also takes away from the talent of those diverse actors (and artists in general) who would have deserved and received a nomination without these stupid regulations. This is also why I felt the show ended on a really low note with this little epilogue speech by Noel Clarke when he talks about being underrepresented. Well, he may have been back then, but this does not make his actions any better. I think he should have sticked to his priginal plan and apologized for what he did back then. The textbook Obama reference is also there of course. No clue what all that was about, maybe a final desperate attempt to show us how liberal the BAFTAs are? I found it fairly disgraceful, but I think politics should be kept out of these shows anyway.
One thing I kinda like was the in-memoriam sequence. It was tastefully done and the music was nice and appropriate. Definitely way better than at the SAG Awards, already with the cringeworthy introduction by the aforementioned Viola Davis. We lost some great folks this year. For me personally the mention goes out to Sean Connery of course because I love Bond movies. But many others deserve mentions too. The only thing I did not like too much there was that sometimes they had a split screen for two cinematographers for example and this was a bit disrespectful because everybody else had the screen for themselves. Another thing I did not like about the show was the music. There were two songs performed and both did almost nothing for me. Oh yes, about what I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I also want to add that np matter how many times the (female) host praises the nominated actresses there afterwards, it does not change anything about this category being a big joke honestly. On a more positive side, Hugh Grant was pretty cool in presenting the BAFTA fellowship to Ang Lee. Not only his little mention of the sublime acting in Sense and Sensibility (which involved him), but also it is very true that Lee deserves all kinds of honors with his body of work. British or not. Still it was a bit sad that he did not get to accept the award live on stage and there in London because of the pandemic obviously. I would have loved to see a longer sequence there, a longer presentation, a longer speech, but the way it was rushed in was not adequate in terms of reflecting Lee's talent. The fact that Grant presented the awards was okay for me, don't need a royal there. So this was the legends award kind of and on the other end of the scale, there is the Rising Star Award that is featured very prominently every year. Same for this year. Each nominee received a little presentation on different occasions. And they even interviewed them briefly. Okay, this was definitely too much honestly, it felt like the biggest category of the night. The Oscars usually do that with the Best Picture nominees. And the nominees... sigh, same issue as earlier. I won't go into detail about that once again.
Finally, there were also categories that did not get included with the live broadcast, but I liked it. It may have felt a bit rushed in the end, but it's ten times better and more respectful than simply leaving these categories out as if they never existed because this is how some (okay, many) other awards show handle it. It was also nice that we got to see the actual winners there (okay, not the nominees) and what they had to say, to whom they were thankful etc. Alright, I guess this is pretty much it, funniest moment of the night? Perhaps Youn Yuh-jung elaborating on how this awards means a lot to her because the Brits are all snobs. The (fairly young) cinematographer of Nomadland showed us how it's not to be done, basically getting his hair right before the winner was announced and then acting as if he was really surprised. I mean he won all the precursors and will also win the Oscar. Nine Inch Nails are also safely on course for Oscar glory, not for a Fincher film this time, but for a Pixar work. Who would have guessed! That one is also bound for Best Animated Feature Glory. Chloe Zhao keep dominating the director category and she also has a small shot at winning editing still I suppose, even if she lost the BAFTA. What makes me a bit happy is Vinterberg's film dominating in Foreign Language Feature these days. Minari would be the only real competition, but it's not eligible. Especially with Vinterberg's background and the tragedy that happened to him not too long ago, but also simply because Mads Mikkelsen is one of my favorites. Oh and the other film NIN are nominated for is Mank and that one deserves mostly a mention for the screen writer. Not gonna go into detail there. If you wanna know what I mean with that, go check it out. He won't win though, but Mank is probably gonna take production design. Tenet seems to be the safe winner for Visual Effects. Ma Rainey has a shot at makeup/hair and costumes. That's really all now. Weak awards ceremony overall, especially with the epilogue monologue, but here and there (also with some of the winners) better than recent American awards shows.
So let's focus a bit on the winners now and as we just mentioned her already said Korean actress from the film Minari was one of the positive moments that night, even if I would have been fine with Bakalova winning as well. She seemed to be the frontrunner this awards season, but never really broke through, so after the SAG Awards awarding the Minari actress and now the BAFTAs as well, it's probably safe to say that Bakalova winning the Oscar would be a fairly big surprise. On the male side, the supporting actor race could not be any more decided. Kaluuya is pretty much through, so the trend continues that has Black actors winning there. He has won every big precursor basically. I have not seen the film, so I won't be a judge, but generally I don't think Kaluuya is a gifted actor, so I would be surprised if he blows me away. I also still see it critical that he praises the man he plays. I mean he was a Black Panthers leader if I am not mistaken and nu neutral observer can deny they were a radical terrorist group, so it's fairly shameful, but with the current take on race and ethnicities in the general media he is getting away with it. Lead acting categories were two surprises. At least in terms of the winners. It's clear the Brits love Anthony Hopkins, but I did not think they'd love him enough to give him the win over Boseman. Still Boseman stays the big Oscar favorite. Lead actress is fairly open again. McDormand would probably be the safe win hadn't she just won her second relatively recently. But Nomadland comfortably in the lead for Best Picture and this BAFTA win for McDormand increase her Oscar chances again as well. There are maybe four people who all have a chance as they all have taken one major precursor. We will see. As long as Viola Davis does not win her second, I'm pretty fine with it. I would still be happy to see Mulligan win, but McDormand would be alright as well. Puty though we did not get any BAFTA speeches from McDormand and Hopkins.
Speaking of the lead actress category, this was nonetheless one of the biggest embarrassments of the night. It seems they adjusted the rules to an extent now when detemining the nominees where every non-Black (especially White) actress has a really hard time to get in. I mean it's really on the embarrassing side that three or four Black actresses were nominated here over Carey Mulligan. Over Olivia Colman. And even over Viola Davis ironically. I have no clue what happened for this set of nominees to get in, but the BAFTAs are not doing themselves any favor for sure if they keep going with this nomination process. In my opinion, there should be no regulations at all when it comes to helping minorities to get nominated. Either they deliver through their performances or they don't. It's all about acting, about the talent and I think that it is a myth that old White men are the reason why there is no real diversity. The only thing worse than no diversity is if we adjust the rules in a way that guarantees diversity because this would be discrimination as well and it also takes away from the talent of those diverse actors (and artists in general) who would have deserved and received a nomination without these stupid regulations. This is also why I felt the show ended on a really low note with this little epilogue speech by Noel Clarke when he talks about being underrepresented. Well, he may have been back then, but this does not make his actions any better. I think he should have sticked to his priginal plan and apologized for what he did back then. The textbook Obama reference is also there of course. No clue what all that was about, maybe a final desperate attempt to show us how liberal the BAFTAs are? I found it fairly disgraceful, but I think politics should be kept out of these shows anyway.
One thing I kinda like was the in-memoriam sequence. It was tastefully done and the music was nice and appropriate. Definitely way better than at the SAG Awards, already with the cringeworthy introduction by the aforementioned Viola Davis. We lost some great folks this year. For me personally the mention goes out to Sean Connery of course because I love Bond movies. But many others deserve mentions too. The only thing I did not like too much there was that sometimes they had a split screen for two cinematographers for example and this was a bit disrespectful because everybody else had the screen for themselves. Another thing I did not like about the show was the music. There were two songs performed and both did almost nothing for me. Oh yes, about what I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I also want to add that np matter how many times the (female) host praises the nominated actresses there afterwards, it does not change anything about this category being a big joke honestly. On a more positive side, Hugh Grant was pretty cool in presenting the BAFTA fellowship to Ang Lee. Not only his little mention of the sublime acting in Sense and Sensibility (which involved him), but also it is very true that Lee deserves all kinds of honors with his body of work. British or not. Still it was a bit sad that he did not get to accept the award live on stage and there in London because of the pandemic obviously. I would have loved to see a longer sequence there, a longer presentation, a longer speech, but the way it was rushed in was not adequate in terms of reflecting Lee's talent. The fact that Grant presented the awards was okay for me, don't need a royal there. So this was the legends award kind of and on the other end of the scale, there is the Rising Star Award that is featured very prominently every year. Same for this year. Each nominee received a little presentation on different occasions. And they even interviewed them briefly. Okay, this was definitely too much honestly, it felt like the biggest category of the night. The Oscars usually do that with the Best Picture nominees. And the nominees... sigh, same issue as earlier. I won't go into detail about that once again.
Finally, there were also categories that did not get included with the live broadcast, but I liked it. It may have felt a bit rushed in the end, but it's ten times better and more respectful than simply leaving these categories out as if they never existed because this is how some (okay, many) other awards show handle it. It was also nice that we got to see the actual winners there (okay, not the nominees) and what they had to say, to whom they were thankful etc. Alright, I guess this is pretty much it, funniest moment of the night? Perhaps Youn Yuh-jung elaborating on how this awards means a lot to her because the Brits are all snobs. The (fairly young) cinematographer of Nomadland showed us how it's not to be done, basically getting his hair right before the winner was announced and then acting as if he was really surprised. I mean he won all the precursors and will also win the Oscar. Nine Inch Nails are also safely on course for Oscar glory, not for a Fincher film this time, but for a Pixar work. Who would have guessed! That one is also bound for Best Animated Feature Glory. Chloe Zhao keep dominating the director category and she also has a small shot at winning editing still I suppose, even if she lost the BAFTA. What makes me a bit happy is Vinterberg's film dominating in Foreign Language Feature these days. Minari would be the only real competition, but it's not eligible. Especially with Vinterberg's background and the tragedy that happened to him not too long ago, but also simply because Mads Mikkelsen is one of my favorites. Oh and the other film NIN are nominated for is Mank and that one deserves mostly a mention for the screen writer. Not gonna go into detail there. If you wanna know what I mean with that, go check it out. He won't win though, but Mank is probably gonna take production design. Tenet seems to be the safe winner for Visual Effects. Ma Rainey has a shot at makeup/hair and costumes. That's really all now. Weak awards ceremony overall, especially with the epilogue monologue, but here and there (also with some of the winners) better than recent American awards shows.
