The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo wins and loses at Baftas

While the mainstream media has focused on the unsurprising ‘home ground’ success of the Colin Firth-led The King’s Speech at the recent British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) Awards, for crime fiction fans there was also some interest in a few of the lesser-publicised awards.

In a well-deserved nod, the Swedish-language film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s juggernaut THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO won the Best Film not in the English Language (equivalent of the Oscars’ Best Foreign Film). This was a truly terrific film - well written, acted, and directed. It actually showed in New Zealand in late 2009 (see my review here), but because of release dates has been eligible for this year’s awards round in England and the USA. Both at the time, and now in hindsight, this was one of the best films I’d seen on the big screen in a long time. It’s a shame it hasn’t got even more attention at the English-speaking awards.

Unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) Noomi Rapace missed out on the Best Actress nod to Natalie Portman’s much-acclaimed and publicised performance in Black Swan. Rapace was truly brilliant as Lisbeth Salander, but Portman has had the Best Actress awards locked up across the board this year, and it would be a massive surprise if anyone other than her took out the biggest of all, the Oscar, in the near future. In a kudos to the Bafta judges, it was great to see Rapace recognised with her Bafta nomination for Best Actress - it’s a real shame Hollywood overlooked her for an Oscar nomination, given her terrific performance.

Have you watched m/any of the nominated or winning films? What do you think of the Bafta results? Has TKS built up some Oscar momentum, or will its hometown advantage come to much less when the Hollywood red carpet is rolled out and the likes of The Social Network, Christian Bale in The Fighter, and Amy Adams, might once again walk away with some of the major awards? Thoughts welcome.