The 67^th BAFTA British Academy Film Awards have just wrapped and it was another good night for Jennifer Lawrence and Cate Blanchett, who failed to thank her Blue Jasmine director Woody Allen in her Best Actress acceptance speech. These wins were both highly predicted, but it’s nice to see the awards being shared around a little more in the male acting categories. Chiwetel Ejiofor won Best Actor for his excellent work in 12 Years a Slave, and Barkhad Abdi scooped the award for Best Supporting Actor for Captain Phillips.

Gravity won three awards including Best Director with 12 Years a Slave picking up Best Film. I suspect this is how the Oscars will unfold as well. There’s a full list of winners beneath my Rialto Channel highlights for the week.

I feel I’ve been talking about The Oscar’s for ages, but after reading stories about potential nominees for next year’s Oscars (off the back of the recent Sundance Film Festival) I’ve realised that obsessing for a couple of months about this year’s Oscars seems reasonable.

The 86^th Academy Awards are still several weeks away, and while we’ve already got through the Screen Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers Guild Awards, as well as the NY Film Critics Circle Awards, the Golden Globes, The Critics Awards and National Board of Review Awards (all in January and early February), there are still two important award ceremonies to come on the long, long road to the Oscars.

First up are the 67^th BAFTA Film Awards on Sunday 16 February, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, hosted by Stephen Fry - for the ninth time.

During February, Rialto Documentary brings cities to life with a fabulous collection of thought provoking and beautifully crafted documentaries looking at how people live their lives in some of the most famous cities in the world. Richard Hankin takes us through the long, difficult task of rebuilding on New York’s Ground Zero (16 Acres), and Ron Fricke takes us around the world, stunning us with beautiful visuals that capture the diversity of our world and its people (Samsara). This week however, filmmaker Julien Temple explores what makes London tick in London, The Modern Babylon.

While half of Hollywood flits from one awards ceremony to another, the other half has packed a slightly more casual wardrobe and headed to Utah, where visionary filmmakers and a mix of A-list celebrities and up-and-coming actors have gathered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Last week, I predicted that either 12 Years A Slave, Gravity or American Hustle would win the Best Picture and Best Director categories at the 86^thAcademy Awards. Narrowing it down to a frontrunner out of these three was going to come down to who win the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Producers Guild Awards and the Directors Guild Awards.

As you’re probably aware it’s awards season, and while The Oscars is the highlight of the season there’s a number of smaller award ceremonies that take place in the build-up to the Oscars. In Los Angeles on Saturday it was the Screen Actors Guild’s (SAG) turn to honour the outstanding work of their members over the last year... 

Months of anticipation and speculation ended today when Liam Hemsworth and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced the nominees for the 86^th Academy Awards. It comes as no surprise that the three films leading the nominations count this year are Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, David O. Russell's American Hustle and Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave.