Forget the Oscars, Here Are the Kermodes: A Culture Show Special The Culture Show

Ladies and gentlemen, the nominations are in,

the votes are been cast

and the most hotly awaited event

of the film awards season is about to begin.

Forget the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the Oscars.

Now in their seventh year,

and bigger, better and, frankly, more bolshy than ever,

it's the Kermodes!

Good evening. Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to the Kermode Awards.

Good to see so many of you here(!)

Is this on?

Here at the Kermode Awards, it's not about posh frocks, red carpets

and grinning celebrities pretending to be happy

when someone else wins their award.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

The Kermodes were established as an antidote to the Oscars,

proving that in any given year it's possible to come up with

a better list of winners from films and film-makers

who weren't even nominated for an Academy Award.

The rules are simple.

You can't win a Kermode for a category

in which you've been nominated for an Oscar. That's it.

We work on UK release dates and my decision is final.

Which means the awards are wantonly partisan,

wholly unverifiable,

but still way more reliable than the Oscars.

And, as ever, this year the American Academy have overlooked

a bumper crop of fabulous films for me to choose from.

But before we start, let's look back at who's been awarded

this coveted statuette

of Richard Nixon's uglier brother over the years.

Sorry, I was just reliving moments from King Kong.

My kids are going to love this.

Thank you so much.

This really is the most important award of the year,

no matter what other people tell you.

And I'm not just saying that because I won it.

Although...well, maybe I am.

-APPLAUSE

-Victory! Victory! Yes!

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Mark.

Um...you are the man.

-I'm very proud of this.

-Good.

-Thank you very much.

I'm really genuinely moved by it.

Thank you very much, Mark Kermode.

That is for real.

I'm so stoked by this, I can't tell you.

This is the one.

This is the one, as far as I'm concerned.

Thank you so much. It's a big honour.

And it's much better than getting an Oscar.

Has it got chocolate inside?

I think I'll give it a kiss.

There you go.

-Ken?

-Yeah?

-I'm really glad you got it.

-You know how much I love you.

-You do.

-Mwah!

Quite a roll call of talent there.

But, without further ado, let's get on with this year's awards.

And we'll start with Best Actor.

-Have you ever killed anyone?

-No.

Brad Pitt, as the craggy-faced hitman in Killing Them Softly,

takes his place in the Kermode hopefuls in this category.

They cry, they plead, they beg,

they piss themselves, they call for their mothers.

It gets embarrassing.

I like to kill them softly.

Along with Daniel Craig, brilliant as Bond in Skyfall.

And the magnificent Denis Lavant,

playing a fiery existential angel in Leos Carax's Holy Motors,

one of the most breathtakingly bonkers films of the year.

But, even with such stiff competition, my award goes to a man

who has become one of the greatest screen presences of our time.

He played the chillingly evil Le Chiffre in Casino Royale.

Give our guests five minutes to leave.

Or throw them overboard.

And this year he played a teacher

wrongly accused of child abuse in The Hunt.

But he bags the award for Best Actor for his role as Friedrich Struensee

in what, for me, was one of the very best films of 2012.

A Royal Affair.

He is, of course, the magnificent Mads Mikkelsen.

An astonishing historical drama based on true events and set

at the court of King Christian VII in 18th-century Denmark,

A Royal Affair features Mikkelsen as the King's rebellious physician

who falls dangerously in love with his wife Queen Caroline

and discovers that all power corrupts.

Hi, everyone. I hope you are having a fantastic evening.

I'm sitting in Toronto, together with this quite handsome

and quite intelligent-looking man.

Thank you for watching our film.

It's Danish, so we are counting every ticket.

I would like to share this with everyone who was involved in A Royal Affair.

Thanks a million, Mark. This is a great honour.

Takk. Tusen takk.

Next up, Best Actress.

Now, there've been several stunning contenders this year,

including Elizabeth Olsen, who brilliantly portrayed

a young woman falling under the spell of a Manson-like cult

in Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Get over it.

-You haven't learned anything.

-I have.

-I thought we had a connection.

-We do.

-Show me.

Although Olsen has yet to be recognised at the Oscars,

the Academy were quick off the mark

with nine-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis,

the youngest Best Actress nominee ever,

for her fantastic performance as a headstrong girl

in Beasts Of The Southern Wild.

I hope you die!

And after you die, I'll go to your grave

and eat birthday cake all by myself.

At the Academy Awards, Wallis will go head-to-head

with the oldest ever nominee, Emmanuelle Riva,

fast becoming an Oscar favourite in Michael Haneke's Amour,

a heart-wrenching film about love in old age.

But the Kermode Award goes to a Swedish actress

who was tipped as a rising star at this year's BAFTAs

and is utterly mesmerising in her role as Queen Caroline of Denmark

in A Royal Affair,

winning its second award of the night.

The Kermode Award for Best Actress goes to Alicia Vikander.

Vikander stars as the educated and enlightened Queen

trapped in a loveless marriage to a mad king.

I met up with her on a brief visit to London

to award her the Kermode in person.

Alicia, welcome to The Culture Show.

Your Kermode Award for Best Actress of 2012

for your fantastic performance in A Royal Affair.

Congratulations. Treasure it.

I will. It's beautiful. It glitters!

Well, it's my first big award for A Royal Affair, so I'm very proud.

I'll find a nice spot for it back home.

What research did you have to do?

It's a historical role, you have to know the background. What did you do?

My biggest treasure was when I found published letters

that she wrote to her family back in England.

After reading those letters, I saw this very young woman

who had to grow up very fast.

She's a survivor.

She couldn't find love,

she couldn't even express any of the thoughts that she had,

so she had to put on the act and role

of being the perfect Queen instead.

And with doing that, she had to, I think, close everything inside.

Then suddenly, this man arrives,

and opens up and shows her that he's equal

in the thoughts and ideas that she has.

Did you go through a long auditioning process for the role?

Yeah, it was a long process.

I remember I got a call from a casting director in Sweden

and she mentioned this film.

I got so excited, but then I called her and, like,

"No, you've made a mistake because I don't speak Danish."

And she said, "No, no, no, but it's fine, you can, you can try."

So I called a friend's mom who's half-Danish, half-Swedish,

who actually recorded the lines on her phone

so I was able to learn them by listening on my iPhone.

-That's how you did it?

-That's how I did my first reading, yes.

-Wow!

I think it was the same thing when I did Anna Karenina.

That wasn't a new language, but it was a new accent for me.

Look at me!

I'm receiving for Papa and Maman, who are late to dress.

It's my first reception.

Princess Ekaterina.

Listen, as I say, congratulations.

I think, you know, you're going to be huge.

Just remember, you know, when you're getting a bit...

we were there very, very early on.

-Congratulations.

-You can see I've been hugging it.

-Yeah, you have. Congratulations.

-Thank you.

Every great film starts with a great script.

I've always been a huge admirer of screenwriter Paul Laverty,

long-time collaborator of Ken Loach,

who wrote The Wind That Shakes The Barley and Looking For Eric.

This year, two of Laverty's screenplays really stood out for me.

His latest Loach collaboration, The Angels' Share.

-Up wi' the kilts.

-What?!

A whisky-galore-style Glaswegian comedy drama

-with real heart and soul.

-Up, I said.

Jesus Christ! What happened to you?

And his extraordinary film-within-a-film script for Even The Rain,

which follows a Spanish film crew into the heart of darkness,

when they go to make a historical drama in Bolivia.

But my Best Screenplay Award this year

goes to Alice Lowe and Steve Oram,

who, along with co-writer Amy Jump,

conjured one of the darkest, nastiest comedies in years

in which they star as latter-day Nuts in May,

combining a caravanning trip with a killing spree.

-Oh!

-Wow!

Thank you so much.

This is...an amazing honour

to win a Kermode Award.

It's really great to be recognised for something

that we've spent about 57 years of our lives...

-Yeah.

-..devoting ourselves to this project.

Being in a caravan together.

Yeah. Having sex, killing people, that sort of thing.

And it's always good when people enjoy that.

Our idea for the film came from

a sketch we did a long time ago

in a live comedy show,

which was two geeky Brummies going on holiday and killing people.

Which made us laugh.

And then that became, over the course of time, a film.

If you don't pick up this excrement immediately,

then I'm going to have to inform the National Trust.

Report that to the National Trust, mate.

Thank you very much.

Handsome.

Handsome, slightly hunched.

-Oh, God!

-THEY LAUGH

On now to Best Director.

Now, this category includes

some typically grievous Academy Awards omissions this year,

including, perhaps unsurprisingly,

previous Kermode Award winner Andrew Dominik,

who directed the gritty, noir gangster movie Killing Them Softly.

-Argh!

-HE LAUGHS

More annoyingly, Christopher Nolan,

who has still never been nominated Best Director at the Oscars,

has been overlooked for the final part

of his brilliant Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises.

My mother warned me about getting into cars with strange men.

This isn't a car.

The real egg on Oscar's face comes from the omission of Ben Affleck

from their Best Director nominations

despite the fact that he's won for Argo almost everywhere else.

You really believe your story will make a difference

when there's a gun to our heads?

I think my story's the only thing between you and a gun to your head.

But the Oscar oversight which overshadows all others this year

is the Academy's failure to recognise Skyfall

for anything other than its music and its technical prowess.

All of which sorely undervalues the narrative qualities of a film

which not only reinvigorated a 50-year-old franchise,

but also gave us arguably the very best Bond episode ever,

blending character, action and good old storytelling.

Honestly, what does a Bond movie have to do

to be taken seriously during awards season?

Well, the answer, at least here at the Kermodes,

is it has to be helmed by Sam Mendes,

the worthy winner of my award for Best Director.

Well, here we are.

Er...I'm very, very honoured indeed to be getting this award.

Um...the Kermodes are increasingly important in our culture.

I'm genuinely thrilled because Mark went on record

several times over the last few years

as saying he's never enjoyed a Bond movie.

And action!

I make movies that are constantly asking for the support of the critical fraternity.

And they're like, "We're not sure. It's a difficult movie, it's a grey area, et cetera."

Finally, you say, "You know what, I don't care what you think.

"I'm just going to make a commercial film that I love."

And then you get given one of these.

I want to say thank you very much

and thank you to the people who watch The Culture Show

and to all the people who went to see this movie.

We had high expectations for it, but it's exceeded all of those.

And so, to all of you, thank you very much.

FANFARE

Next to the Kermode Award for Best Film Not in the English Language.

And, don't worry, A Royal Affair isn't even eligible here

because it did sneak into Oscar's Best Foreign Language Film category.

But my other contenders will include The Hunt, Even The Rain,

Holy Motors and Once Upon A Time In Anatolia,

an eerie, hypnotic gem of a film

in which the hunt for a dead body in the Turkish desert

becomes a treatise upon the fragility of human life.

But the Kermode Award goes to a film from the other end of the genre spectrum.

Incongruously directed in Indonesia by Welshman Gareth Evans,

The Raid is set in a high-rise Jakarta slum

through which a SWAT team

have to battle floor by floor to get to a criminal overlord.

You know, like Judge Dredd but better.

The film is a bone-crunching treat, beautifully choreographed,

splendidly directed and head-crackingly violent.

BLEEPING

Sorry, I can't be in the UK to accept this myself,

but it was very nice to see this arrive on my doorstep the other day.

The Raid was pretty much a make or break film for me to be honest.

In Indonesia it was an opportunity to try to exercise as many little genres

as I could possibly fit into one film. And, thankfully, it seems to have paid off

and people have responded to it very kindly.

So I'm very, very proud and very, very happy.

And this is the icing on the cake. So thank you very, very much.

And now to the biggie. The Kermode Award for Best Film.

An award that's become so significant the American Academy

have actually increased their own Best Film list to up to ten movies,

just to try and scupper us.

Well, guess what, it hasn't worked,

because every year my own very favourite film is notable only by its absence from Oscar's list.

Last year it was We Need To Talk About Kevin.

In the past, Pan's Labyrinth, The Assassination Of Jessie James,

Let The Right One In. All timeless gems.

This year my favourite films have included Even The Rain

and, of course, A Royal Affair,

both of which would have been worthy award winners,

but they've just been pipped at the post by a British film set in Italy,

shot in London and staring a previous Kermode Award winner.

To announce the Best Film Award in style

and to open the golden envelope, please welcome to the stage the chairman of the Kermode Awards.

APPLAUSE

Mark, would you do the honours.

But of course.

The Kermode Award for Best Film 2013 goes to...

DRUM ROLL

..Berberian Sound Studio.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So Peter Strickland, Toby Jones, for the best film of 2012

the Kermode Award for Best Film for Berberian Sound Studio. Congratulations.

-Thank you very much, Mark.

-Thank you.

-Peter, take it quick.

-Toby has one already.

-I have. You have that one.

-It's really quite something.

Thank you very much.

What's he doing to her?

Berberian Sound Studio tells the story of Gilderoy, a mousey sound engineer from Dorking,

who's hired to work on a violent Italian shocker.

I didn't quite know I'd be working on this sort of film.

What did you expect?

It is a visual film about sound.

All the sounds you normally ignore in real life or in a film,

the radiator, the industrial sounds around you.

Even now the air-conditioning has this beautiful choral element to it.

And I just wanted to make a film that explicitly puts that on the table

and lays out the mechanics of it,

but somehow shows you the mystery of it at the same time.

VIBRATION HUMS

I guess I was just fascinated by this divide between this very repellent violence on the screen,

but then this kind of ridiculous pantomime element of grown men smashing vegetables.

And you're kind of watching it and you think, "Should I laugh? Should I be disturbed?"

I like the confusion that it creates.

WOMAN SCREAMS

SCREAMING CONTINUES

Gilderoy during the course of making the sound effects is drawn into the world of the film.

Describe for me what happens to him when he's first confronted with the film that he's working on.

His first glimpse of the footage,

he's both aghast and entirely perplexed by what he sees.

We never see it but we imagine it, because of the sort of lurid sounds

that are being made at the time by the Foley artist.

And the division between what he's working on and what is working on him

sort of becomes blurred.

It is just a film.

You are part of it!

You can see how all this is put together.

What's... what's your problem with this?!

Maybe it's best I go home.

Now it's time for the Kermode Award for Best Documentary.

And, despite the fact that there's a huge amount of great documentaries out there,

factual film making still has a traditionally hard time at the box office,

which makes this award particularly close to my heart.

One of the most poetic documentaries I saw last year was Patricio Guzman's Nostalgia For The Light.

It's set in Chile's Atacama Desert, where astronomers come to gaze at the stars

and victims of the Pinochet regime still search for the buried remains of their loved ones.

It's a must-see film that ranks alongside the documentaries of Werner Herzog

in offering a profound insight into the human condition.

Also in the running, The Last Projectionist,

a beautiful, timely and ever so slightly heartbreaking account

of the changing face of cinema in the UK.

Comfort, courtesy and good cheer

are available inside for the leisure hour,

but the artistic neon lighting at night-time

adds another bright spot to the thoroughfares of Birmingham.

But the statuette for Best Documentary

goes to a David and Goliath tale of ordinary people standing up against big business.

It's my home. I've stayed here for 43 years now

and he wants to murder it.

It has a real-life villain in the shape of an appalling American billionaire

riding roughshod over people and environment alike as he attempts to build a luxury golf resort

in an area of staggering scientific and natural interest in the dune landscapes of Aberdeenshire.

I don't think you want the windows looking down into a slum.

The corruption and collusion between money, politics and the police

that filmmaker Anthony Baxter uncovered are shocking indeed

and will make you very angry.

Although not as angry as they made Donald Trump.

For which reason the Kermode Award for Best Documentary

goes to the brilliantly enraging You've Been Trumped.

Wow! This is a fantastic honour.

Thank you very much indeed, Mark.

Also to the great Bill Forsyth, the director of Local Hero,

who endorsed You've Been Trumped at a crucial moment.

The real life local heroes that You've Been Trumped follows, the local people,

have shown extraordinary dignity, courage and commitment to their local environment and the planet.

So I'd like to dedicate this award, Mark, to them. Thanks very much.

And, finally, to the very last award of the evening.

It is, of course, the Kermode Fellowship Award.

The highest accolade a film-maker can achieve,

the Fellowship recognises an outstanding contribution to the art of cinema.

This year the recipient is a film-maker whose work continues to thrill and inspire me.

His first feature film, That Sinking Feeling,

made it into the Guinness Book of Records as the cheapest theatrically released feature ever.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of one of his most famous films

and a personal favourite, Local Hero, an inspiration as we've just seen for You've Been Trumped.

The Kermode Fellowship Award goes to a real film-making hero, Bill Forsyth.

Bill is a pioneer of British cinema

who first made his mark with a number of bittersweet comedies in the 1980s.

Bill Forsyth, for outstanding contributions to the art of cinema,

-welcome to the Kermode Fellowship Award.

-Oh, my goodness!

-That's why you brought me to this pub.

-It is.

That's fantastic. I don't know what to say. I'm very, very touched.

Raised in post-war Glasgow, he left school at 17

to take a job with a film company where he made short documentaries,

but his ambition was to make features.

We used to joke about the fact that the only way we'd get a feature film

was if some Hollywood producer saw our film about fishing boats

and decided we were the guy for his next Doris Day movie!

So it was pretty remote. So then it was do-it-yourself time.

Well, not a bad night's work, eh, fella? 93 stainless-steel sinks.

-And our very own snoring zombie.

-MAN SNORES

Bill's debut film was the wonderful That Sinking Feeling.

It starred actors from a local youth theatre in a comedy about a gang of unemployed Glaswegian teenagers.

Oh, aye. And what do you propose?

We wheel 'em up to the front door and ask for a cashier?

I wrote that very quickly

and we shot it in three weeks with, you know, virtually no money.

And it did work. It worked in many ways for me. It got some exposure.

Suddenly, I had people who were prepared to read the script for Gregory's Girl.

And that happened the next year with a proper budget.

-OK, into twos now.

-Gregory's Girl became Bill's breakthrough film.

A story of adolescence and first love in a Scottish new town,

it was an instant hit with both the public and with critics.

What's going on?

She's gorgeous.

She is absolutely gorgeous!

After the success of Sinking Feeling and Gregory's Girl,

there's this partial move across the Atlantic with Local Hero,

which is a classic case of a home-grown movie

but it has aspirations towards an American audience.

It is, as you know, one of my favourite films of all time.

What do you think is the key

to why Local Hero has worked so well for such a large audience?

When I start a movie, I always put a message to myself in the front of the script.

A little prologue. And in that case, it was from that poem,

"What is this life if full of care We have no time to stand and stare?"

So, I suppose, that was my little message going into it.

So I don't know if that is part of the response that you created to it.

Would you give me a pound note for every grain of sand I hold in my hand?

Now you can have the beach for that.

There, I've saved you a pound or two, eh?

Come on, Ben, I don't want to play games.

-Let's negotiate in a businesslike way.

-Oh, dear, oh, dear!

You could have had a very nice purchase there, Mr McIntyre.

I find I'm very unsuited to being a film-maker,

because I think film-makers should be people who are slightly extravagant.

You know, and slightly out there.

Throughout my whole film-making time, I think I've been, like, whispering in a crowd.

And it's not the perfect way to get something across to people,

whispering in a crowd, but it's what I think that I've done.

That's what it's amounted to.

Well, I am really glad that you found the reasons to make the films you make,

because without them my life would be infinitely less rich.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you for all your encouragement.

And if...if I do make another film, it will be for you.

Really. God bless you.

And that brings us to the end of tonight's Kermode awards.

There you have it, the very best of what cinema had to offer last year

as judged by me.

So until Oscar drops the ball again next year,

thank you and goodnight.

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