Oscars 2011: The King's Speech sweeps the 83rd Academy Awards (eventually)

The British were coming after all, but left it late

The King’s Speech survived a faltering start at the 83rd annual Academy Awards – think of it as an Oscar-night stammer – to emerge victorious with four trophies, three of them in the last 30 minutes of the (seemingly endless) ceremony. But long after this cinematic Cinderella’s final domination of the gong-giving season just gone is forgotten, 2011 will be remembered as the year that the Oscars dropped the F-bomb.

Opinion: Awards - aren't you sick of them?

This obsession is insane, corrupt and spoils my fun. And the year is stuffed full of them

Sorry if I haven’t seen you since New Year, darling, but I've been non-stop. Last night it was the whatsonstage.com awards, I’m in LA next weekend for the Oscars of course, and I ruined my Jimmy Choos at the Globes - such a riot! I had to pop into a couple of dull old Critics Circle awards, but there's only wine, lovey, and at least Melvyn's South Bank do gives you a decent dinner. Was so hungover I had to positively skulk at the National Television Awards the next night. God knows how I stitched myself together for the BAFTAs last week.

theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Colin Firth

The best interview ever with the Oscar-winner as he talks about what made him an actor

In some ways it’s been an odd career. Everyone else in Another Country (1982), the stage play by Julian Mitchell about gays and Marxists in a 1930s English public school, shot out of the blocks. Colin Firth was the only actor to play both lead parts, one onstage, the other on film (1984), but he took the slower road to outright stardom and only now is he clearly the bigger cheese than Rupert Everett, Kenneth Branagh and possibly even Daniel Day-Lewis.

DVD: The Social Network

Status update: the Facebook movie which found drama in geekdom

In films featuring computer whizzes, there is always a key scene in which, to illustrate the whizziness, a star actor bashes on a keyboard at implausible warp speed. The Social Network is the first major film to respond to the drama inherent in the internet boom. (What’s next? Google in China: the movie? Tehran: the Twitter Revolution?) But it’s one of The Social Network's unremarked attractions that a movie starring computers has no truck with fetishising geekery.

The 2011 Baftas, BBC One: The Twitter Review

It's a royal procession. How events unfolded, in no more than 140 characters

@Wossy seems to have been cast as second baddie in #PiratesduCaribbean 4

This intro is entirely about namechecking the films so they can cut away to the US stars who've jetted in from #Tinseltown

Lame string of Little Fockers jokes.

These clips montages always make films look like the complete Shakespeare. Then you go and see them...

@Wossy seems to have been cast as second baddie in #PiratesduCaribbean 4

BBC Folk Awards: Chris Wood, Bellowhead, Donovan winners

Folk goes showbiz at annual prizegiving

Last night’s BBC Folk Awards are as showbiz as the folk world gets – presenters Barbara Dickson and Mike Harding might not exactly be Hello! grade glamourpusses but they had a glittery backdrop anyway and there were a few star presenters of awards, including Roger Daltrey, Frank Skinner and Joanna Trollope who was suitably jolly hockey sticks about the whole endeavour. The big winners of the night were Chris Wood, Bellowhead and, for a lifetime achievement award, Donovan, which was presented by Mark Radcliffe.

Last night’s BBC Folk Awards are as showbiz as the folk world gets – presenters Barbara Dickson and Mike Harding might not exactly be Hello! grade glamourpusses but they had a glittery backdrop anyway and there were a few star presenters of awards, including Roger Daltrey, Frank Skinner and Joanna Trollope who was suitably jolly hockey sticks about the whole endeavour. The big winners of the night were Chris Wood, Bellowhead and, for a lifetime achievement award, Donovan, which was presented by Mark Radcliffe.

DVD: Winter's Bone

Jennifer Lawrence deserves her Oscar nomination for this powerful mythic backwoods thriller

The timely arrival on DVD of Winter’s Bone as it heads for the Oscars ceremony gives a fresh chance to dwell on the film’s unshowy riches. Jennifer Lawrence plays 17-year-old Ree whose father has disappeared, leaving her to care for an invalid mother and a much younger brother and sister. If she can’t find him, a bail bondsman will repossess the family house in the Missouri backwoods.

The Fighter

Four award-worthy performances in a knock-out boxing movie

A paean to working-class bellicosity set (and shot) in the rundown industrial town of Lowell, Massachusetts, David O’Russell’s boxing film The Fighter relishes its brawls. In one inspired scene, a character is unceremoniously slammed to the ground and punched repeatedly in the face. Not Queensberry Rules? That’s because the assailant is the eponymous pugilist’s girlfriend and her victim one of his seven sisters, who have arrived on her porch with their mother one morning to wrest him away from the siren’s clutches.