Criticise Stephen Fry’s zingers at your peril
Stephen Fry has carved out his place as a popular Baftas host – at least for those at Bafta, as he’s now been doing it for 15 years. His one-liners have magically managed to avoid offence, which also makes him well-liked by the celebrity attendees. But this year, one particular lol turned into more of an omfg on Twitter.
After costume designer Jenny Beavan accepted her award for Mad Max: Fury Road, Fry compared her outfit to that of a “bag lady” causing much anger on social media. But Fry hit back, referring to those who criticised him as “sanctimonious fuckers” who should “fuck the fuck off”. On the plus side, it’s the closest thing we had to drama this year. On Monday morning, he appeared to have deleted his account.
Julie Walters is queen of the clips
For her “female giddiness” outburst playing the cantankerous landlady Mrs Kehoe in Brooklyn. So rarely do clips deliver — briefly and in essence — the nature of a performance. Clips tend to cut people off midflow, leaving you baffled. But this clip gives you the microcosm.
It’s just long enough to be satisfying and amusing. It lets Walters shine; it showcases that tasty Irish accent, it lets her play off the younger actors but utterly upstages them and then she gets to finish the clip herself by banging the table. Enough! That clip has played every talk show and award show. It is pure clip perfection.
Bafta’s attempts to go viral = kiss of death
The @BAFTA award for Best Kiss is awarded to Dame Maggie Smith and Leonardo DiCaprio. 💋 #BAFTAs pic.twitter.com/vxTvG9AlXw
— BBC One (@BBCOne) February 14, 2016
In recent years, the Oscars have tried to create more and more viral moments, in line with the tireless talk show tradition of clinically engineering easily shared rofls on a daily basis. This year, the Baftas tried to do their own with a rather bizarre take on the US sports tradition of the “kiss cam” as Fry tried to get various celebrity pair ups to make out on the big screen.
While Maggie Smith and Leonardo DiCaprio played along, actual real life couple Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander refused to showcase their love and, given the awkwardness that ensued, the moment was culled from the telecast (though a fleeting reference remained). This failed attempt at “doing a viral” now makes Baftas the MySpace of awards ceremonies.
EE equals an EEK: this year’s red carpet was a dead feed
Before the ceremony had even begun, the biggest Bafta fail of the year had already happened – for two whole hair-pulling hours. This year, the idea was to show the red carpet arrivals via a live stream on YouTube. A great idea on paper but on actual tech, a rather horrendous one. The video was mostly unwatchable, cutting out, buffering and annoying pretty much anyone trying to watch, even sometime Bafta red carpet interviewer Edith Bowman.
Anyone else having problems with the @BAFTA live stream? Xx
— edith bowman (@edibow) February 14, 2016
The most embarrassing element is that the ceremony’s sponsor is EE, whose 4G brags now seem even more far-fetched. Somewhere online, we hope Kevin Bacon is being personally blamed and ruthlessly trolled for this.
Julie Walters may own a small house
You know it’s a quiet night for controversy when Julie Walters mislaying an earring makes headlines, but then again, this was no ordinary earring. It was a diamond dangler worth “about the same price as my house” – and it is now missing in action. “As I got up on stage,” reported Walters, “I realised one of them was not there.” Walters then reiterated the property comparison saying: “Somebody’s found a bit of it, but even that it probably worth more than my house, so I need to look around.”
Without intimate knowledge of the value of Julie Walters’s house we can’t be sure exactly how much money we’re talking, but we do fear she has likely tipped off whoever might have been about to hand it into lost property they’d be advised not to do so. Plus, although Walters does look considerably paler following the loss, she also looks much more relaxed and gangster.
If it’s 14 February, it must be time to meet the parents
Leo DiCaprio thanked his mum for driving 3 hours every day so he could go to a good school. @schooltruth won’t like that! #EEBAFTAs
— Toby Young (@toadmeister) February 14, 2016
From Leonardo DiCaprio’s birthday shoutout to his mum, who he remembers driving him three hours a day out of his rough east LA neighbourhood “to a different school, to show me a different opportunity”, to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s emotional tribute to his dad on the second anniversary of his death, this was a ceremony at which those parental influences loomed large, particularly in The Revenant camp. (This was doubtless a shoot to make you hanker for home.)
Less parental accord was found in the case of Amy, whose best documentary win prompted this from Mitch Winehouse:
Please don't congratulate me on the Amy film winning BAFTA. This is a one dimensional, miserable and misleading portrayal of Amy.
— mitch winehouse (@mitchwinehouse) February 14, 2016
Asif knows
Forget raft-gate, it does end happily for Jack and Rose
It was a big night for Titanic fans whose last Jack and Rose reunion was the rather un-romantic Revolutionary Road, a film about a couple ripping each other apart and destroying their dreams. Tonight saw both Kate and Leo win awards and their brief moments together were savoured by those who were still sore about that floating door. DiCaprio referred to Winslet as his “homegirl”, the pair “grabbed hands” as she accepted her Bafta and, perhaps most heartbreakingly, she said he didn’t even care about whether Jack could have squeezed onto the floating door or not. Which is a very Frank and April thing to say.
Rebel Wilson wins (or loses) but probably wins
In a night dripping with lukewarm contributions to the diversity debate, Rebel Wilson’s hat-trick of envelope-pushing really made an impact. Item one: Wilson saying “I’ve been practising my transgender face” so she can win future Baftas. Item two (praising Bafta’s drive to increase its mix of voters): “And that’s what we all wanna see in life, isn’t it – diverse members.” And item three, on Idris Elba making her nervous: “I’m sociologically programmed to want chocolate on Valentine’s Day.”
In 20 seconds flat, Wilson had cemented her place as this year’s comedy saviour or foul-mouthed bigot, depending on your point of view.
#TomCruiseSoStraight
Often wheeled out to announce the winner of a major award at various ceremonies, this year Tom Cruise was called upon to reveal what would be named best film. But, despite his experience in this very specific field, his envelope-opening shtick is always disappointingly strait-laced. While virtually every presenter before him had a sometimes clumsily-written skit to perform, Cruise was joyless and alone. On Valentine’s Day too. Most of the Twitter chat was of the Renee Zellweger variety with MSP Ruth Davidson likening him to “a late-90s era Sandi Toksvig”.
And finally … there was good news for white men
While Carol’s best picture omission at the Oscars was seen by some as an out-and-out snub, it entered this year’s Bafta race as a frontrunner, with nine nominations. But by the time Stephen Fry had made his last joke, it emerged with a grand total of zero awards. The night belonged to films fronted by men, from Leonardo DiCaprio’s chilly obstacle course The Revenant to Tom Hardy’s dusty chase thriller Mad Max: Fury Road. Best supporting awards also went to Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies and Kate Winslet in Steve Jobs, both centred around male characters. #BaftasSoSexist?
