National Movie Awards

When it comes to Film Awards there are rather a lot of them to go around. You've got the biggies like the Oscars, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes, then you've got the National Board Of Review, the various regional critics awards, the SAG Awards, the DGA Awards, the WGA, the MTV Movie Awards, the People's Choice Awards, plus things like the Empire Awards. And then, of course, you've those that relate to the four main film festivals (Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and Venice) as well as the literally dozens and dozens and dozens associated with film festivals around the globe that fill the movie calendar year in, year out. In light of all this, it takes a brave sort to launch yet another event, much less pull it off. While the BAFTAs haven't got anything to fear from this uncritical upstart, I wish to doff my metaphorical hat to those behind the inaugrual National Movie Awards, which aired on ITV on Saturday night, for a (reasonably) entertaining show and a respectable turn out (Helen Mirren, who amusingly chastised the event for calling itself "movie" rather than "film", Dustin Hoffman, Jamie Foxx, the Potter posse). If you didn't see it, the winners (as voted for by the public) were pretty evenly split between HP5 and 007 21.