don't necessarily qualify

Film Long term readers will remember my general apathy towards The Baftas, The Oscars and most awards ceremonies of late. I've simply become tired with the process of seeing so few films receiving nominations in categories that they don't necessarily qualify for, but find themselves in because of block voting on the part of the people filling in the ballot. It hasn't been quite so bad this year but there are simply some films which haven't turned up and it's just shocking.

What happened to Broken Flowers?

Also, as usual, there's the prejudice against genre movies. With the exception of The Lord of the Rings, Bafta's been notorious in overlooking great performances in writing, directing and acting in this catagory. I'm bound to say it, but Summer Glau's work in Serenity was just extraordinary and although I'm not sure if she was even put forward it's a real shame she's not taken one of those five places. Similarly, why shouldn't Sin City have a cinematography nod? The problem is that these films are looked at sniffily -- for whatever reason they're not considered to be attracting a wide enough demographic to be considered worthy or to have been seen by the majority of Bafta voters.

Of course, certain people will be unsurprised to see that Match Point has received precisely no nominations despite some buzz not too long ago that it'd be a shoo in. I'm still trying to decide whether it was a work of genius, madness or hubris. I'm assuming that Bafta think that it's one of the latter...