Pomona for Facebook

  Movies have never felt more needed than they do now. As COVID continued to wreak havoc with the Delta and Omicron variants during 2021, the ability to escape from the grim reality of a pandemic to watch a movie with family, friends and complete strangers has never felt more precious. 2021 was, however, another year of significant disruption for the film industry as cinemas closed for part of the year and the Coronavirus continued to frustrate our efforts to get back to the society we once had. Lockdowns during the winter months of early 2021 meant audiences in the first half of the year still had to consume major movie releases on streaming platforms. The Academy Awards went ahead but  not as we have known it , with some nominees attending an event in New York and London as well as the main ceremony taking place in a train station in LA. Film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Toronto also went ahead - although many had a mix of in person and virtual screenings and discu

   Sometimes,  even TV dreams come true. 2021 was the year that 'Star Trek' fan Jeff Bezos took Captain Kirk -  well, William Shatner  - into space. After another year when fact seemed as strange as fiction, 2021 began like an action packed sequel to Charlie Brooker's withering, star studded Netflix retrospective  'Death to 2020' Brexit properly kicked into action on New Year's Day and within weeks shoppers noticed  missing products on supermarket shelves  and delays to the delivery of parcels. The Northern Ireland Protocol had all manners of teething problems, with alleged threats to sea border staff at the Port of Larne, the European Union at one stage openly considering triggering a clause that would have resulted in a land border to stop quantities of the Covid-19 vaccine crossing into the UK via the Irish Republic, riots in loyalist areas of Belfast and Lord Frost unilaterally extending the grace period for certain goods. With a more virulent strain of Coro