Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom won two categories, Costume Design and Makeup & Hair, thus topping the opening night (4/10) of the British Academy Film Awards. Eight of 25 award winners were revealed during the show; the balance of the honorees will be announced tomorrow evening.
Other feature winners tonight were: Mank for Production Design; Sound of Metal for Sound; Tenet for Special Visual Effects; and Rocks for Casting.
The night’s two remaining winners were for short-form fare. The Present earned the British Short Film Award, while the BAFTA for British Short Animation went to The Owl and the Pussycat.
The award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema, announced last month, was presented to filmmaker Noel Clarke.
Opening night of the BAFTA Film Awards was hosted by Clara Amfo alongside guests Rhianna Dhillon and Joanna Scanlan.
Tomorrow the proceedings will be hosted by Edith Bowman and Dermot O’Leary. Like the first evening, the wrap-up ceremony will be from London’s Royal Albert Hall with nominees attending virtually. In addition, the Fellowship, the highest honor the Academy can bestow, will be awarded to director Ang Lee.
Here’s a rundown of Saturday evening’s winners:
CASTING
ROCKS Lucy Pardee
COSTUME DESIGN
MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM Ann Roth
MAKE UP & HAIR
MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM Matiki Anoff, Larry M. Cherry, Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Mia Neal
PRODUCTION DESIGN
MANK Donald Graham Burt, Jan Pascale
SOUND
SOUND OF METAL Jaime Baksht, Nicolas Becker, Phillip Bladh, Carlos Cortés, Michelle Couttolenc
SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
TENET Scott Fisher, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Lockley
BRITISH SHORT ANIMATION
THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT Mole Hill, Laura Duncalf
BRITISH SHORT FILM
THE PRESENT Farah Nabulsi
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More