Archive for the 'Awards' Category
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
Support Mr Bojagi (starring Brian Blessed).
For all my talk of writing, some friends of mine developed a script and then went and bloomin’ made it too. With Brian Blessed, no less!
MR BOJAGI is a ten-minute short film directed by Marco Van Belle, written by Kat Wood, gorgeously shot by Alex Veitch and featuring a soundtrack by that Heather Fenoughty lady (who seems to get mentioned round here from time to time) and is an offbeat but upbeat, heartwarming tale of choosing the perfect gift for a loved one…even if it takes a madman with a mind-reading machine to do so.
On Friday, MR BOJAGI launched online having already heavily toured the festival circuit, picking up the British Lion award at the British Independent Film Awards and Best Short at the London Independent Film Awards along the way. As I type, MR BOJAGI is already well over 14,ooo views on Daily Motion where the film is being heavily promoted and also features behind-the-scenes peaks with cast and crew.
MR BOJAGI is also a glimpse of a planned feature-film which I’m lucky enough to have read the hugely imaginative first draft of. So, if you haven’t already clicked on any of the links above, please click HERE to support an independent short by some lovely people. And also because it’s good.
There’s a facebook group and the film’s home page for further updates. But, as it’s Sunday afternoon, just sit back and watch a nice film.
Blessed be.
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
What makes a film a ‘Best Picture’?
Described as the most important of the Oscars, Best Picture always seems to be the most contoversial - probably because it’s the vaguest in terms of what it actually is. And this year’s selection is certainly a mixed (as well as much larger) bag.
So what does ‘Best Picture’ mean to you? When discussing with friends, I blithely claimed ‘You shouldn’t be up for Best Picture if you’re not up for Best Original/Adapted Screenplay’ which is, of course, mostly bollocks …Mostly (see how I steered the conversation round to James Cameron there?)
In terms of Avatar, there hasn’t been a Best Picture nominee not to receive a Screenplay nomination since, oh, Titanic. The James Cameron conspiracy continues 
But Titanic wasn’t the first. Star Wars was nominated for Best Picture without a screenplay nom but lost out to Annie Hall (which then went on to win both). But I don’t understand how you can compare Woody Allen and George Lucas (beyond arguing that both their earlier work was better) for making the film of the year.
It’s curious that they’ve taken the number of nominees back up to 10. While it’s nice for certain films to be acknowledged, should you be nominated if you haven’t really got a chance of winning? (But then do the Oscars actually mean much beyond the personal choices of the Academy and possibly a bit of Hollywood politics?)
So is Best Picture the film that’s better than the sum of its parts? The film the Academy wants to be remembered for choosing? An award for taking film in a new direction or against the trends of the last few years? I’d say it can be all of those things. But is that varied message why we sometimes think, in past years, that the Academy clearly got it ‘wrong’?
And who do you want to see win Best Picture 2010? And what the hell makes it ‘Best Picture’ anyway?
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
Where am I?
Or more specifically, ‘where have I been’? Dear blog, it has been four weeks since my last confession. All sorts of depravity has occurred (mostly while in London). Myself and Heather attended the Arthur C Clarke Awards where Heather was Composer in Residence And I admit it, while I’ve been away, ever so briefly for fancy-dress purposes, I had a moustache.
The shame. But what have I been doing other than that? It’s something I’ve been asking myself. I’ve worked hard on my application for the BBC Writer’s Academy. Another writer I know said recently they’d rather
slit their wrists than slum it writing an episode of Eastenders.
Gosh. Personally, I’d rather blow an audience’s socks off with a me-written episode of Eastenders, hope it caught producers’ attention so they had me back AND get paid for the pleasure at the same time. Does that make me an idiot? 
I have also been chasing various competitions and schemes a bit much and definitely trying to second guess what I think people want when writing. So over the next few months I’m going to take some time to write me-specific stuff again and getting it right just for me. Even if it means letting schemes or competitions fly past me.
Maybe I’m just inspired by the lovely fun new Star Trek movie - boldly going where no one has gone before and so on. Then we’ll see where that takes us. Fingers crossed. 
Friday, March 27th, 2009
Complimentary Booze & Boozey Compliments (Part 2)
Oh well, our short film ‘Moth to a Flame’ didn’t make it any further than an honorable mention in the shortlist at last night’s Performance short film awards. But it was still a fantastic night. I was particularly pleased for Sam Donavan’s ‘Hammerhead’ which took third place as I am a big fan of his films and was frankly really impressed with the overall winner ‘Gone Fishing’ which starred Bill Patterson of ‘The Singing Detective’ . It also featured a nice twist, a subtle Matrix reference, some good laughs and nearly made me cry (nearly!) so pretty much delivered, in my opinion.
As always at such occasions, there was a good opportunity for the dreaded ‘networking’. My lovely Heather has written a fantastic blog post about what to do when you’re nervous and talking to potentially useful people. But I was also really pleased to bump into someone I haven’t seen in three years who I used to write for so it was great to catch up and made the whole thing a lot less scary.
So congratulations to the winners and it was nice to still be in the top 12 of over 400 entries. However, with the deadline for the next round of Screen Yorkshire’s Digital Shorts next week, it has given me a lot to think about as I get my two scripts ready to submit. Maybe the next film will be the one
