The Some Comms Awards are a new set of awards to celebrate the best in UK social media communications and recognise the individuals, companies and organisations that are “revolutionising the use of online to communicate in cool and innovative ways”. Unlike many awards these are free to enter, with the only cost being to attend the awards ceremony on December 9. The Some Comms Awards are being run independently by Don’t Panic, the events company that was responsible for organising the UK’s first ever public relations social media conference way back in November 2005. I was one of the speakers at that conference, as was Neville Hobson and Philip Young and we’re all judges of the Some Comms Awards which means we’ve all got a long track-record in public...

Following the news that Durrants, Metrica and Gorkana have joined forces to provide the PR industry with a best of breed PR planning, media monitoring and PR evaluation platform Metrica is looking for an Account Director to join our succesful team.  As an Account Director you will be working on an enviable list of global household names and taking the lead on a portfolio of clients. You will also be responsible for: Growing the client portfolio revenue Provide guidance and advice to Account Managers and your account team Attending and running senior management meetings and contributing appropriate strategies to achieve the desired business direction Provide support on process management and quality control Motivate and develop individuals and take an...

People are already talking about Toy Story 3 for an Oscar win, either in the Best Picture (for which it is now eligible) or Best Animated Feature categories. To News Hour the latter seems more likely but, to return to our point in the review, TS3 does not have the most original plot in the world – a by-product of it being a sequel. It may have developed emotionally from the previous instalment, but the mechanics of the story hasn’t moved on too much. It’s just that type of movie.So no Best Picture win, would be our obvious prediction. As to Best Animated Feature? Wait and see what comes out later in the year, but it looks like ‘a lock’ for now.There was a similar split situation last year with Avatar which, while technically brilliant, lagged in the story stakes – that ended...

On this week's podcast we celebrate the best of brief-but-beautiful cinema at London's Rushes Soho Shorts film festival. We talk to the writer/director Deborah Haywood, whose film, Sis, takes a courageously comic look at society's fear of paedophiles through the eyes of two young girls. Deborah talks about making the film in her native Derbyshire and how important the doomed UK Film Council was in the realisation of her project. Carol Salter's film Unearthing The Pen took the best documentary prize at the festival. Carol talks about traveling to northern Uganda to make her short, a remarkable look at the life of Locheng, a young boy whose dream to learn to read and write is thwarted by a curse his elders put upon the written word 40 years ago. Remi Weekes is a young London director...

He was once nominated for a best director Oscar, but while Branagh brings gravitas to Thor, Marvel's latest superhero project, initial impressions from the new footage suggest an over-reliance on CGI• Watch the footage here"I just thought it sounded like a weird idea because Kenneth Branagh's directing it, so I was just like: 'Kenneth Branagh doing Thor is super-weird, I've gotta do it'."That's Natalie Portman's take on Thor, the next instalment in Marvel's ongoing bid to bring its vast catalogue to the big screen (or at least, those characters who weren't auctioned off to other studios before the company worked out that it could do a better job itself). She's right, isn't she? Branagh's involvement is pretty much the main thing the film has going for it: it may have been 21 years since...

Exiled artist Shirin Neshat's first film is about the lives of four women in her native Iran – but it won't get past the country's censorsShirin Neshat sits in the cafe of a London park enthusing about pirate DVDs. The artist and first-time film director is unconcerned with the effect on ticket sales, instead praising the ingenuity of black market sellers who have made illegal copies of her film, Women Without Men."My sister managed to buy five copies in a store, with a new cover and everything," she tells me. "She sent someone to buy some more, but the guy said, 'Lady, we have already sold 500.' I was really happy." The store was in Iran, where the film is set, and the DVDs are likely to be the only way anyone in the country will see her film. Neshat is confident it will never get past...

EPL Talk Podcast host Richard Farley recently conducted a brilliant interview with ESPN director Grant Best on our sister podcast, Major League Soccer. The interview was so good that I wanted to be sure to share it with you here on EPL Talk. The topics that Best and Farley cover are perfect for the EPL Talk audience. Grant Best has the enviable position of being director of soccer coverage for ESPN, which means he’s one of the main blokes who picks and chooses which camera shots in a live game to show to the viewers. Sounds easy enough but there’s a lot more to his role than that. And even when he’s in the production booth and has the role of picking and choosing which camera shots to put on television, his decisions have a massive influence in how the game itself is perceived by...

She's an actor, producer and now director who has spent her whole life in the public eye. But call Drew Barrymore a celebrity at your perilDrew Barrymore, whose first film appearance was as a three-year-old and who, at 35, is, by virtue of pedigree, productivity and insanely laconic vowels, the youngest grande dame that ever was, is rousing herself to condemn the state of the entertainment business. "Celebrity!" she says, casting a furious eye across the Manhattan office. "It's become the most disgusting word on the planet. It makes me sick to my stomach." I have just asked whether celebrity aids or inhibits her in studio meetings. Now her earrings are shaking. "When I started out I was an actor. And now when someone calls me a celebrity, I want to shoot them. I want to go,...

Broadway now beckons for 28-year-old Katori Hall, whose play had world premiere on tiny pub stageIt was meant to be the glittering awards night where Jerusalem went up against Enron. But they were both pipped by a play from a young, black female writer which had its world premiere on a tiny pub stage in south London.Katori Hall's The Mountaintop was the surprise winner of best new play when this year's Laurence Olivier awards were handed out tonight.Hall, from Memphis, Tennessee, was inspired to write her play – an imagined account of Martin Luther King's last evening before his 1968 assassination – by a family story about her mother. It was spotted by James Dacre, son of Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, who directed its world premiere at the 65-seat Theatre503, above a pub in...

Kate Winslet and her film director husband Sam Mendes have separated after nearly seven years of marriage, their lawyer announced today.Keith Schilling of legal firm Schillings, said: "Kate and Sam are saddened to announce that they separated earlier this year. The split is entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement. Both parties are fully committed to the future joint parenting of their children."He added: "They ask that the media respect the privacy of the family."Winslet, who won an Oscar last year for her role in The Reader, married Mendes, who won a best director Oscar in 1999 film debut, American Beauty, tied the knot in a secret ceremony in the West Indies in May 2003. Later that year Winslet gave birth to the couple's son, Joe. She has a daughter, Mia from her first marriage to...

Can Matt Damon's half-fiction set the benchmark for a popular history of the Iraq war?Now is the moment for the Iraqi war film. Less than a week after the low-budget The Hurt Locker won Oscars for best picture and best director, Paul Greengrass's big-budget Green Zone has hit the screens. Following a series of Iraq war flops, the latest efforts show how the fictional Iraq has the potential to overshadow the reality.Indeed, last week BBC News at Ten featured an interview with Matt Damon about his portrayal of Warrant Officer Miller, a soldier looking for WMDs in Iraq, while not reporting on a multiple bombing in Baghdad that killed more than 30 people.It can be argued that such adrenaline-fuelled dramatisations of the conflict distance people from any ability to understand actual events....

I started making pornography for women because there was a need. And now I want to do something about the need for more female MPsI'm Anna Arrowsmith, the Liberal Democrat PPC for Gravesend or, as many will know me, Anna Span, the UK's first female porn director. Take your pick.Since news of my selection broke on Thursday, many people have asked me why I want to be an MP. The answer is: for exactly the same reason I decided to start making pornography for women more than 12 years ago. Someone had to do it and it didn't look like anyone else was going to – at least not with the drive, enthusiasm and determination that I could offer. The unfortunate truth is that there are far too few female MPs in this country compared to the rest of the world.Did you know that Rwanda has the highest...

Anna Arrowsmith's previous profession is not my cup of tea, says Lib Dem leader, hailing her as no cardboard cut-out Westminster politicianA former porn director who has been selected as a parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats would be a passionate campaigner for her local area, Nick Clegg said today.Clegg said Anna Arrowsmith's previous profession was "not exactly my cup of tea", and she was certainly no "cardboard cut-out Westminster politician".But he said it was important that "people like her" who care about their local areas put themselves forward.Clegg was speaking ahead of the Lib Dems' spring conference, which begins in Birmingham tonight as the party seeks to rally activists ahead of the general election.He told GMTV he had "just read the reports" about Arrowsmith,...

Here’s the story, which presumably earned its place in the Torygraph thanks to the titillating headline it teed-up: Anna Arrowsmith, managing director of adult film company Easy on the Eye, will stand for the party in Gravesham, Kent. Under her pseudonym Anna Span the 38-year-old has produced around 300 pornographic films. She has specialised in “women friendly” films, with titles like Where’s the Rent Boys aimed at female erotica enthusiasts. Mrs Arrowsmith asked the people of Gravesend not to judge her on the sins of her industry and pointed to her background as a campaigner for women’s rights. The Lib Dems finished third in Gravesham in 2005 with just 4,851 votes. She said: “I have gone into the industry with a view to changing it and making it more...

The idea of making history with Kathryn Bigelow won the Academy over in the end – that along with the authenticity of The Hurt Locker and a clever awards campaignAvatar and The Hurt Locker entered Sunday's Oscar ceremony like a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and a dinghy bound for the same chunk of promised land. The seemingly mismatched opponents were the lead contenders for the major prizes outside the acting categories (Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner was a deserving nominee but it was always going to be Jeff Bridges's night) and, of course, there was the added spice factor of marital history.James Cameron glided into the 82nd annual Academy Awards at the helm of Avatar, Golden Globulised six weeks earlier in the best director and picture categories and, lest we forget, the biggest movie...

Possibly my favourite of her...

Biggest cop out: While Neil Patrick Harris was ace, it felt completly disconnected from everything else in the Academy plan: It was like ‘Hugh Jackman was good last year’+ ‘NPH was good at the Emmy’s last year’ + ‘audiences like things that are old and safe and unthreatening like Steve Martin. Let’s mix all of those without actually letting them intersect in any interesting fashion, yeah? Weakest hosting hit: Some hosts manage to make that bit where they run through every important nominee and namecheck them, by rote, without leaving anyone out and with equal weight given to their mention, with complete dignity. Addressing James Cameron with the 3d glasses was less than sledgehammer-obvious; he stared at them like the tall guy hearing the ‘what’s the weather up there...

Best picture – The Hurt Locker Best director – Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) Best actor – Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart) Best actress – Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side) Best supporting actor –... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]...

• Kathryn Bigelow is first woman to win best director Oscar• Avatar gets only three out of nine nominations• Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock, Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique win acting honoursFor once, the Oscars were a genuine nail-biter. Right through to the final reel, it was too close to call between the David and Goliath of this year's contenders: Avatar, James Cameron's 3D space opera, and The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow's low-budget drama about a squad of US bomb disposal experts working in Iraq. That Bigelow and Cameron were once married merely heightened the drama – quietly exploited by the ceremony producers who sat them directly behind each other – as did the huge disparity in their box-office takes (with over $2.6bn, Avatar is the biggest film of all time; The Hurt Locker...

As if to honour International Women's Day today two women made history at last night's 82nd Oscars ceremony.First there was the obvious news as Katryn Bigelow beat off the competition especially ex-husband James Cameron to be the first female recipient of the Best Director award for The Hurt Locker. In what was also only the fifth nomination of a woman in this category Bigelow said, "It's...

We're all familiar with giving 100 per cent, right? Even 110 per cent. But when you're working for James Cameron, that's just not enough. Speaking to Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet, Avatar star Zoe Saldana said that the entire cast was inspired to work to Cameron's own high bar of 150 per cent. Wow. Does any director give 200 per cent, and is it his ex Kathryn Bigelow? If so, Cameron had better watch out come Best Director...UPDATE: You give it when working for Quentin Tarantino, according to Diane Kruger. Does that mean he's a 'lock' for...

Rightwingers have championed Sandra Bullock's portrayal of a Sarah Palin-esque woman transforming a youth's life, but liberals want Gabourey Sidibe's gritty debut rewarded tonightOne film celebrates the courage and generosity of a white middle-class "soccer mom" who transforms the life of a disadvantaged and illiterate teenager from Memphis. The other tells the bleak but uplifting tale of the troubled teenage years of an obese, pregnant black girl living in Harlem, New York.So far, so different. But the leading actresses in both The Blind Side and Precious – two of the most powerful hits of the year – are in strong contention for the Academy award for best actress in Los Angeles tonight.Sandra Bullock, who plays the Christian heroine of The Blind Side, has been widely praised for her...

BEST DIRECTOR, 1962They said...Pietro Germi, Divorce — Italian Style*David Lean, Lawrence of ArabiaRobert Mulligan, To Kill a MockingbirdArthur Penn, The Miracle WorkerFrank Perry, David and LisaI say...Luis Buñuel, The Exterminating AngelJohn Frankenheimer, The Manchurian CandidateDavid Lean, Lawrence of ArabiaSidney Lumet, Long Day's Journey Into NightAndrei Tarkovsky, Ivan's ChildhoodWith a huge roster of unusually worthy runners-up: Stanley Kubrick (Lolita), John Ford (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), Robert Aldrich (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane), Michelangelo Antonioni (L'eclisse), Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water), Arthur Penn (The Miracle Worker), Tony Richardson (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner), Jean-Luc Godard (Vivre sa vie), Edward Dmytryk (Walk on the Wild...

Kathryn Bigelow's depiction of post-invasion Iraq takes six awards, while Colin Firth wins best actorIt came, it saw but, boy, did it fail to conquer. James Cameron's Avatar, which has taken more money at the box office than any other film in the history of cinema came away tonight with just two Bafta awards in an evening dominated by arthouse films on a fraction of its budget.The outright winner at the London ceremony was The Hurt Locker, directed by Cameron's ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow. It won six awards including best film, director, original screenplay, editing, cinematography and sound.British success came in the acting awards with Carey Mulligan named best actress for An Education and Colin Firth best actor for A Single Man.The Hurt Locker, a grittily realistic depiction of US army...

The British Academy Film Awards 2010 are kicking off in London's Royal Opera House. Follow the awards live with Xan Brooks at the event nowIn pictures: The Baftas stars, the glamour, the soggy red carpet9.47pm: Now, where were we? Lest we forget, the Baftas are not the Oscars. The Oscars build through the acting awards, reach a grand crescendo on the best film award and then quit while they're ahead, cutting the transmission and pitching all the winners and losers into the tumult of the after-show party, But the Baftas are British and therefore different, and the best film award is merely a throat-clearing warm-up for the most important bit of the night. And here it is: it's the presentation of a Bafta fellowship to Vanessa Redgrave.Redgrave is handed this honour by Uma Thurman, who...

Filmmaker under house arrest and fighting US extradition is rewarded with Silver Bear for thriller about former British prime ministerRoman Polanski was crowned best director at this year's Berlin film festival for his thriller The Ghost Writer, in a move some saw as politically motivated because of his fight against extradition to the US over rape charges.The 76-year old Polish-born filmmaker, who was unable to attend the awards ceremony because he is under house arrest in his Swiss chalet, sent a pithy acceptance statement via his producers, saying: "Even if I could be there I wouldn't, because the last time I went to a festival to get a prize, I ended up in jail."Polanski was referring to the Zurich film festival, where he was arrested last September at the request of US authorities...

Roman Polanski wins the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin Film Festival for his new political thriller, The Ghost...

Jacques Audiard's gripping prison drama and Andrea Arnold's unflinching portrait of an Essex girl were the big winners at the London Critics' Circle awardsForget the big blue aliens, the best film of the year – according to 91 of Britain's professional critics – is the brutal, gripping French prison drama A Prophet.The Jacques Audiard saga was tonight named film of the year at the 30th London Critics' Circle awards in central London, at a ceremony where James Cameron's Avatar did not even get a mention.Chairman and Observer writer Jason Solomons called it a victory for world cinema and said critics were fed up with "the ghettoisation of films at awards ceremonies". He added: "The overwhelming feeling was that this year, the energy, daring, skill and drama of the best European...

It’s that time of the year again, the time when film audiences wait with baited breath to find out which films and filmmakers have been honoured with that most tantamount of accolades, the Academy Award Nomination. Naturally, the only thing better than being nominated for an Oscar is winning one, but it’s still a huge honour to be nominated, especially for Science Fiction films that manage to make it through. Though geek has arguably been becoming chic since the late 90’s, ours is not the most mainstream of genres. In recent years, this has been changing and more and more Scifi and Fantasy films have been rearing their heads at Academy Awards ceremonies; judging from the list below it looks like this positive trend is continuing with a vengeance this year! There are of course loads...

James Cameron's Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker have nine nominations apiece, while Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds has eightIt's an annual party that is notable this year for being dominated by two directors who used to be husband and wife. The question though is: will that pesky troublemaker Quentin Tarantino spoil the whole evening?The nominations for the 82nd annual Academy Awards were revealed in Los Angeles at 5.38am local time precisely and were monopolised by two very different films – the insanely over the top sci-fi epic Avatar from James Cameron, and the grittily realistic Iraq drama The Hurt Locker, from his ex-spouse Kathryn Bigelow.Both gathered nine nominations, but sneaking along behind them was Tarantino's unique take on the second world war,...