I for one was extremely moved by her Fellowship Award. I can relate one small tale about her from around 10 years back which follows on from the 'famous people you have met who are...' thread, and which might demonstrate something of her character. My sister and I had come along to see Zakir Hussain at London's Union Chapel. Quite a lengthy queue had formed, so we took our seats in one of the pews at the back. Vanessa snuck in and perched herself next to us, very unobtrusively. As the concert was nearing kick off she was spotted by Ishmail Merchant, who was sitting at the front. He spirited her away for a chat and Vanessa asked us to look after her coat. When it was suggested she move to the front to sit with him she put up quite a fight not to. Unfortunately for us Mr. M was most insistent and she eventually did, but she came across as a lovely, modest lady.

and Colin Firth's speech was quite witty. Vanessa Redgrave was the meandering luvvie you feared (although I did hope she'd go off on one about the situation in Palestine). Katherine Bigelow was humble and quite yummy and "Let the Right One In" was robbed.
I didn't catch the start, so can't comment on that.
However after Liamgate which celeb wants to make themselves look an arse? I'm not surprised that things are a little bit staid.

My main gripe was the MC. I thought Ross was a particuarly appalling host in his last year doing this, reading a succession of badly written gags from an autocue with all the delivery skills of a dead postman.

(Why ever did Stephen Fry stop hosting instead ?)

I've enjoyed watching the Baftas for a while ,(last year's show with star guest Sir Mick of Jagger was a hoot) but I thought this year's highlights looked rushed and amateurish.

(More BBC cutbacks maybe?)

... so sadly I switched. But it was boring.

Three scriptwriters, apparently. For that? There was no love in the room for him and he knew it. And if Carey Mulligan and Colin Firth win at the Oscars I'll eat my hat.

The whole thing is so tedious. It lacks any sort of showbiz glamour. Everyone's so busy putting on their best RP accents that it all ends up being a bit stiff. A distinct lack of Hollywood stars this year.

And Vanessa Redgrave - grace and dignity for sure, but a communist AND a royalist? You can't have it both ways love.

Grief, I don't know how you can say the BAFTAs were worse than the Brits. From a TV production perspective, the Brits was awful; clunky, lacking in flow or a style. Not so much a series of glitches, more a cock-up that never found its feet. Peter Kay (bless him) was wooden, the directing of the performances lacked fire or imagination (and it was clearly obvious that every act was miming for the most part). And, for my money, any serious production that values Fearne Cotton as their key music person needs to go back to the drawing board (at least, if the programme is aimed at audiences over the age of ten years old). I, for one, was embarrassed by how bad it was.

The BAFTAs on the other hand looked good, had a nice feel; and whilst the auto-cue seemed more prevalent (as the villain of the piece) than on most shows (why do they bother?), it was as good as it could have been. Ross wasn't as annoying as he's capable of being - perhaps kept in check by a room full of people that are more famous than he is - and the VTs were fine. I, for one, came away wanting to check out a couple of films I'd overlooked (An Education, specifically).

It's an award show, what did you honestly expect to happen? How would you have made it better?

I used to enjoy the BAFTAs, especially when Stephen Fry was the compere. They had deliberately made a strategy of bigging them up, changing the date to just before the Oscars, upping the profile etc. For a while it worked. But last night, barring the odd speech, felt as flat as a pancake. Which is pretty dismal when they have the heavyweights of Cameron and Bigelow there. It felt planned to death - the desperate attempts to focus on the autocue by everybody, the quick whiz through the candidates, followed by mostly routine acceptance speeches. Any spontaneity or sparkle had been suppressed by the apparent wish to hurry it along, no doubt to fit in with TV schedules - the Oscars are doing similar this year.
While not wishing a Brits type debacle on them, it desperately needs some sort of unrehearsed, unguarded moments with some real humour and glitz. This was more like the annual marketing convention in Moat House, Leeds.

...is that, for what appears to be the first time, the BBC have caved in to political correctness when they said on their website that both Colin Firth and Carey Mulligan had won Best Actor BAFTAs. Not to say that the word 'actress' hasn't been used by the BBC since last night, both on radio and TV - and, being the BBC, they're trying to please everybody - but it seems as if they are adopting a policy to make the label genderless.

For the record, this winds me up because there is nothing wrong or demeaning about the word 'actress'. Yes, you could argue that a female doctor or writer is still just a doctor or a writer; but in this case there is a perfectly good, existing word that we are being made to feel guilty about using.

What's a female lion called? Exactly. And, if anything, they do more hard work than their male counterparts anyway.

agreed the BAFTA'S was dulla s dish water but at least they gave 'the hurt locker' it's due credit. j.ross was dying up there with those gags

as much as i love 'let the right one in', 'a prophet' is the film of the year so far

They've amended the story on their website now, so I just look like a crazed conspiracy theorist.