Lay Reader

Rating: 5/10 (3 January 2009)

It's that time again, folks, Oscar is looming and here is this year's Atonement, ticking all the right boxes to impress the impressionable. Surely it's time the Acadamy created another category, a set of Awards eligible to Best Festival Fodder leaving the established set of awards for movies who just want to entertain and make a buck on the side. As if Festival Fodder weren't enough this is yet another platform in the campaign to 'get-poor-Kate-a-gong', a campaign managed by those who somehow think Kate Winslet is an actress. There's a lovely irony at work here for by electing to play a woman who never had a moral compass to lose Winslet just reminds us that in private life she abandoned a husband unable to further her career in favour of a high-profile director who has, indeed, just directed her in another movie, Revolutionary Road which targets the gong circuit. Okay, the Oscar has been devalued so what's the harm in tossing one her way except that that would put her on a footing with both the Hepburns, Bette Davis and other Real Actress winners which would be a travesty especially if awarded for the gift of a role which even Pia Zadora couldn't screw up.