06/02/2008

With the awards season underway in full swing, it was the turn of the annual Evening Standard British Film Awards to join the party. Daniel Day Lewis scored yet another Best Actor win for his magisterial performance in There Will Be Blood and Helena Bonham Carter took home the Best Actress prize for her turns in Sweeney Todd and Conversations with Other Women.

Julie Christie won the Alexander Walker Special Award. The award is named after the Standard’s late, revered film critic and was given to Christie for a stellar career that has seen many memorable films and an academy award and a BAFTA for Darling (1965).

Joy Division biopic Control [+see also:
trailer
film profile] added another award to its already bulging kitty, winning Best Film and Best Screenplay for Matt Greenhalgh. The film beat off challenges from Atonement [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and There Will Be Blood.

Atonement won the Overall Technical Achievement Award with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Sarah Greenwood and costume designer Jacqueline Durran being honoured.

Irish film Once [+see also:
trailer
film profile] also continued adding to its awards, with writer/director John Carney winning the Most Promising Newcomer award. Acclaimed Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood won the Best Film Score award for composing the There Will Be Blood soundtrack.

Bonham Carter said that she did not particularly care for awards ceremonies, commenting, “I think awards should be abolished for a few years but here I am standing at a ceremony. They cancel each other out because there are so many of them and they come round too soon and it is a frock show. To be honest, I was so relieved not to get nominated for anything but this because there wasn't a frock to organise, any press to do. I think there’s just too many.”