E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

There have been many exceptional films this year, but it is hard to know which are strictly eligible, given that so many have appeared on streaming platforms only or first; I think I am right in saying the Academy is being lenient for the 2020 crop, and feature-length is all that is required. Despite there being some superb films of the year I have yet to see, here are what I predict as definite picks, and likely, winners, for some major categories - STARTING TODAY WITH some best actor possibilities. BEST ACTOR Chadwick Boseman - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Boseman electrifies in his role as the arrogant upstart Jazz musician with a streak of genius , deformed by cruel white racism into madness; as he died too soon, this award is his to lose. Gary Oldman - Mank Lose it he won't, but could, to Oldman's finest hour since Churchill, as a drunken, brilliant, and crushed screenwriter with the soul of a poet, matching wits with starlets, tycoons, studio heads, and Orson Welles. Riz

As this blog warned a few weeks ago, this was never going to be a period of calm. Unexpectedly, Brexit trade was negotiated speedily, and is not the issue. However, in the UK, a new total lockdown occasioned by a rampant new strain killing 1000 a day, and in the US, a president amok, powered for 12 more days, have made the anglo-sphere shaky, to say the least. I now turn to the events yesterday on Capitol Hill. There has been some hyperbole, but most of the claims for the historical moment are on the money. This blog long expected a 'Reichstag' moment from the president, what is surprising is how haplessly he unleashes, and then passively leashes the dogs of chaos back in. He seems the Hamlet of coups. A bolder, smarter demagogue would have yesterday declared the Insurrection Act, called out the army, and suspended all rights, annulling the election results, and getting sworn in by a flunky, while launching wars against enemies. That's what Augustus , more or less did, at t