Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers will be in the running at the 2007 Baftas. Picture: AP
Pity poor Bafta. For several years now, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has been trying to reposition its film awards as the next best thing after the Oscars. These days, its global reach is prodigious. Even the Pope has the chance to watch the show if he cares to: the 2006 Bafta film awards were sold to "231 territories and principalities," including the Vatican. Astonishingly, given that it attracted a TV audience of only 3.4 million in the UK, it is one of the three highest selling UK TV shows globally this year.
The organisers are credited with putting on a grand show. Nonetheless, they also have an uncanny knack of lobbing banana skins in their own path. First, there was the Million Dollar Baby saga in 2005. Clint Eastwood's movie was overlooked by Bafta members on the grounds that hardly any of them had seen it prior to voting. The same fate befell Alexander Payne's Sideways.
The organisers weren't really to blame. It wasn't their fault that the distributors of two of the most acclaimed films of the year were so terrified of piracy that they didn't send screeners to Bafta members. Nonetheless, the embarrassment was palpable.
Now that embarrassment looks set to get worse. Bafta's decision to close its list of entries on February 9 next year may seem like simple commonsense. Given that the awards take place two days later, on February 11 2007, it's hard to question Bafta's thinking in excluding films released after this date. Their problem is that several of the year's biggest movies - including titles that are bound to be Oscar frontrunners - have been taken out of the running.
The Clint Eastwood curse has struck again. The director's latest opus, Letters From Iwo Jima, is one of the titles that has fallen foul of the new regulations. (It's only a small consolation that Bafta members will have another Eastwood picture, The Flags Of Our Fathers, to vote for instead.)
Bafta isn't unique in its timing problems. Bizarrely, the recent European Film Awards (EFAs) refused to consider either The Queen or Paul Verhoeven's Black Book because of their release dates. Awards nominations are so sought after because they are excellent marketing tools. The fact that both movies will be eligible for EFAs next year, long after they've been seen in cinemas, is no use at all to their distributors.
Then again, any self-respecting awards show ought to set its own agenda. Bafta can't simply see itself as "a bellwether for the Oscars" as Variety calls the event. If certain likely Oscar candidates fall foul of its eligibility rules, that should hardly be a cause for consternation. Last year, most of the Bafta awards went to US movies. This year, with Ken Loach, Stephen Frears, Andrea Arnold and co on the march, there is a strong chance that the Brits might feature too.
Clint Eastwood may miss out, but the Pope ought still to find a show worth watching if he remembers to tune in. My guess is that he will be rooting for The Wind That Shakes The Barley.
