BAFTAs "live"

David here, bringing you the least live 'live blog' in TFE's history. Nowhere on the planet are the British Academy Film (and Television) Awards broadcast live - not even in their home country. No, we Brits struggle along with the rest of you as the BBC stubbornly refuses to move with the times and shows the edited ceremony two hours after its begun.

But let's make the best of it. Over the next few hours I'll bring you a melange of results and commentary, mostly surmised until the ceremony comes in, which will hopefully have some individual flavour worth reporting. The celebrities have already walked up the foaming red carpet in London's famous torrential rain, so, to kick off, here are a few highlights from the BBC's brief coverage so far.

Chilled to the rust and boneMarion Cotillard couldn't even muster a brave face as she was persuaded to stop racing down the carpet and pose for a few photos. Has it ever NOT rained on BAFTA night?

Marion's here tonight as a Best Actress nominee for Rust & Bone - BAFTA also nominated Helen Mirren, leaving Quvenzhane Wallis and Naomi Watts on the sidelines for tonight - but it's Emmanuelle Riva, who wisely skipped the long route into the building, who I've got my fingers crossed for tonight. Can she add a little flavour to the Best Actress race by surprising J-Law here?

Helen Mirren. Pink hair. The interviewer here oddly didn't even attempt to ask what's going on with this. MORE...

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I Think I'm Going to Link It Here

NPR Bradley Cooper speaks. And charms. 
New York Times 'red carpet projects' 478 looks from Oscar's past. Truly random selection but it was fun seeing some of the stunners again
LA Times another day, another prize for Argo. This time it's the USC Scripter prize for screenplay (which goes to the author of the original text and the screenwriter who adapted it). I'm glad there are a few "who will win?" dramas left for Oscar night but, as ever, Best Picture won't be one of them. Argo has become a steamroller.

Gawker Rich Juzwiak slams Rex Reed's unkind words for Melissa McCarthy but makes a righteous demand of Identity Thief's star: "Transcend, McCarthy, transcend."
Atlantic Wire beautiful posters for Oscars Best Pictures via Gallery 1988
Salon The Rethuglicans are already spending big to "make fun of" actress Ashley Judd even though she's not yet (officially) given up showbiz for politic
Guardian talks to Stephen Daldry about his Oscary career and his latest stage piece (directing Helen Mirren as the Queen again)

Coming Soon in the many articles spreading the assumption that Quvenzhané Wallis will soon become little orphan Annie in the second big screen adaptation of that stage musical, none have ever confirmed that she can sing. If you can't belt "Tomorrow" the role can't be yours. Can she?
Carpetbagger with Oscar, there's even competition to make the "In Memoriam" list. No, not by dying. I didn't mean it like that.

and here's the complete Oscar nominated short Adam and Dog by Minkyu Lee

Lovely.

Bunheads: Eternal Sunshine of the Psychotic Mind

SusanP here, back with more Bunheads coverage. It’s good to see some fans out there are also Film Experience people. For those of you haven’t watched the show, it’s a safe bet you’ll enjoy it if you love the work of either series star Sutton Foster or creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. For the rest, I’d still encourage you to give the show a try. There’s really nothing else like it on television right now. 

Previously on Bunheads… 
“Take the Vicuna” was directed by actor/writer/director, Chris Eigeman, who is probably best known for his work in Whit Stillman films like Barcelona. He also played Jason Stiles on Sherman-Palladino’s Gilmore Girls and a one-off character on Bunheads last summer. Eigeman stopped by the comments this past Monday and offered a heads-up as to what “Take the Vicuna” refers to: it’s a line from the Billy Wilder film noir, Sunset Boulevard. The reference works on a number of levels as the characters deal with issues of control – something Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis wrestled with in that 1950 classic. 

Those issues play out in the three major storylines [more after the jump]:

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Burning Questions: Are Jump Scares Ever Not Awful?

Michael C here. I recently caught up with Andres Muschietti’s Mama and found it to be a decent little chiller with one particularly irksome habit. It is packed end-to-end with cheap jump scares. It’s as if the studio insisted the director include a quota of brainless “Boo!” moments amid all the creepy suspense stuff that takes actual filmmaking skill. 

Savvy filmgoers understand that jump scares are the worst. Apart from the fact that it requires roughly the same level of craft to startle someone with a loud noise as it does to zap them with a seat buzzer, they have the added drawback of creating distance between the audience and the film. They release tension, rather than build it. This explains their popularity among teenagers who see horror movies as a carnival ride, doling out empty “scares” with mechanical timing.

So finding a minefield of these cheap shots in another otherwise capable spook story like Mama got me thinking. Are there any defensible examples of the jump scare? Or is it an artistic sin every time it’s trotted out?

jump scares after, um, the jump.

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Thoughts I Had... While Staring at the First Image From "Nymphomaniac"

Behold the first still released from Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac which will star Charlotte Gainsbourg (in her third collaboration with the director following Antichrist & Melancholia). These are the thoughts I had in actual chronological order...

• That's a really odd choice for a first still. It's a tremendously vague tease but better this than those movies which release "first looks!" that might as well be headshots of the actors, they're so generic.
• Remember when Laura Dern got high from inhaling glue in paper bags in Citizen Ruth? 
• If that were Michelle Pfeiffer and this were 1992, a bunch of cats could run into frame and resurrect this poor soul.

• Who is this poor soul? 
• This doesn't look as fun as the movie's title. Bleak it looks.
• If this movie is as good as The Idiots (1998), my vote for the single most underappreciated von Trier marvel, I will want to have sex with it.
• Did you see Smashed? That scene where Mary Elisabeth Winstead accidentally smoked crack during a Lost Weekend really threw me.

• Will this movie have a mix of pathos and humor like many of von Trier's films or will it be an across the board icky provocation like Manderlay or Antichrist.
• Oh, I actually just looked up the plot synopsis on IMDb which suggestes that this is an image of Charlotte from perhaps the opening scene of the movie:  

A self-diagnosed nymphomaniac recounts her erotic experiences to the man who saved her after a beating.

• Interesting cast I think: Returning von Trier alum Charlotte herself plus Jens Albinus, Udo Kier, Jesper Christensen, Stellan Skarsgård and Charlotte's Antichrist hubbie Willem Dafoe; Scandinavian von Trier Virgins: Shanti Roney (who was marvelous in a sexually charged uncomfortable scene in Applause) and international actress Connie Nielsen who turns it out when a director challenges her (i.e.  infrequently but enough to make you long for the next time); People we most hope have sex very naked and super often in the movie even if its uncomfortably von Trierian sex: Jamie Bell & Uma Thurman; Stunt Casting: Christian Slater (as Charlotte's father?!) and Shia Labeouf who one assumes wanted to get naked and artsy again. 

p.s. here's a second official image, less vague, less safe for work.