Diary: 2004 AFI Awards wrap-up

A week after the AFI Awards and I'm finally weighing in. I figure this is my duty as I was one of the only people in the world who got to see it - it not being screened on free-to-air television this year, but instead being picked up by Foxtel's "arts" channel Ovation.

Firstly, I'm not even going to bother talking about the awards won by Somersault (2004) (i.e. every one it was nominated for), because everyone cares enough to read this knows that stuff already. However, I will say that it must have sucked to be Nathaniel Dean or Hollie Andrew, as they were both up against other supporting actors from the same film (Hollie Andrew and Lynette Curran, respectively), and were the only ones associated with the film to not win in their category (having lost to their colleagues).

So, the evening began with the first award being given to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) for Best Foreign Film, and there was a supposedly hilarious bit where the person accepting the award kept talking for longer than the 30 second speech allocation, and was eventually pulled off stage by a giant hook. This set the scene for the level of comedy attained for the rest of the evening.

Another indication of the quality of the night came when Best Supporting Actor winner Thomson said in his speech "I would say it's a surprise, but I saw it flash up on the screen a few minutes ago." - nicely done, AFI Awards production team!

In terms of the non-feature film awards (the other categories that I voted in), Best Short Fiction Film went to Lennie Cahill Shoots Through (2003) (they won my praise by thanking all the members who went to the screenings and voted - i.e. me!), Best Documentary was won by Lennie Cahill Shoots Through (2003), and Best Short Animation was taken by Birthday Boy. These winners were the closest to my ratings in the three years that I've been voting for the awards, so I was quite happy with the outcome (I had rated So Close to Home (2003) higher in the Short Fiction category, but close enough!).

In terms of entertainment, Paul Kelly performed an interesting a cappella version of Meet me in the middle of the air from the nominated feature film Tom White (2004). They then had the "AFI Solid Gold Dancers", a group of old ducks who performed a cabaret style dance number. Apparently they had performed at an earlier AFI Awards ceremony. Next, for some unknown reason, Kate Ceberano performed her latest single Wanted: Lover. No Experience Necessary. This annoyed me, as I couldn't see what it had to do with film, and it was time that could have been used for the AFI Award winning Decoder Ring to perform something from the Somersault soundtrack. Oh well.

As the night drew to a close, a young people's choir sung I still call Australia home, just to prove that these were Australian awards, and the song over the credits was It's a long way to the top, performed by Matt Hetherington, and present due to the nominated film Thunderstruck (2004).

Overall, a fairly dull night - having the same film win virtually all of the awards doesn't make for a very fascinating event, as far as I'm concerned (the television program Marking Time won most of the television awards too, so no variety there either). Here's hoping the IF Awards, screening on regular television next Wednesday the 10th of November (SBS, 8:30) will be a little more enthralling.

by pearly on Fri 5 Nov 2004 at 17:57 PM

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