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  ANORA (Sean Baker) As we soak up the hype around this year's crop of Oscar nominees this weekend, one question hangs in the air. Could a $6 million comedy drama about a lap dancer facing the wrath of Russian oligarchs really be the slight favourite for Best Picture? Apparently so - although no-one can state with any conviction that 'Anora' or any of its big rivals will emerge triumphant at Sunday night's Academy Awards. On paper, Sean Baker's movie is an unlikely contender for Hollywood's most coveted prize, given that it's a low budget, indie comedy drama with a relatively unknown cast about a sex worker. 'Anora,' though, won this year's Producers Guild and Directors Guild awards as well as last year's Palme d'Or at Cannes and in a tight Oscar race, that has been enough to catapult it into the front rank of contenders alongside ' Conclave ' and 'The Brutalist'. In recent years, Academy voters have shown a willingness to...

  There's a story that during the making of 'The Royal Tennenbaums', Gene Hackman exploded with the quirky Texan director Wes Anderson, telling him "to pull up his pants and act like a man". Fellow cast members afterwards described Hackman as a "hardass" during the making of the film. But it was also clear they were in awe of him. While Bill Murray was the only cast member on the set not to defer to him, there was a feeling among many of his co-stars that Hackman had earned the right to be a hardass after his stellar career. Born and raised in San Bernardino, California but raised mostly in Danville, Illinois, the former Marine was very good at playing the hardass on and offscreen.   According to a plaque in San Bernardino’s municipal park, Hackman was a dog catcher for the local animal shelter. @ Orion Pictures The family, however, moved around the US finally settling in his maternal grandmother’s home in Danville in Illinois. As a teenager, he knew Dic...

   A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (James Mangold) When you look back on the career so far of director James Mangold, you kind of know what to expect from him. Over the course of 13 features from ' Heavy ' and ' Copland ' to ' Walk The Line ,' ' Logan ' and ' Ford Vs Ferrari/Le Mans 66 ,' he has delivered in the main robust, well written, well acted Hollywood films. There's been the odd blot on the copybook - ' Knight and Day ' and ' Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny '. However for the most part, he has been a pretty solid, reliable director. This year he has received his first Academy Award nomination as a director for his Bob Dylan pic 'A Complete Unknown' - a return to the music biopic territory he mined so effectively in the Johnny Cash flick 'Walk The Line'. And it comes as no surprise that Cash appears in this biopic - not in the form of Joaquin Phoenix but played by Boyd Holbrook. However it is Timothee Chalamet ...

AMANDALAND, S1 A great spin-off on TV is a rare jewel. The original ' Frasier ' is probably the best example of a spin-off that really works - so much so that the 21st Century ' Frasier ' reboot seems insipid by comparison. ' Better Call Saul ' and ' Lou Grant ' are also examples of spin-offs that succeeded on their own terms. Nevertheless the world of television is littered with offshoot shows that failed spectacularly like ' Joanie Loves Chachi ' from ' Happy Days ,' ' Joey ' from ' Friends ,' ' Beverly Hills Buntz ' from ' Hill Street Blues ' and ' Rock and Chips ' from ' Only Fools and Horses '. For three series, Sharon Horgan, Graham Linehan, Helen Serafinowicz and Holly Walsh's London school gate sitcom ' Motherland ' built up a loyal following with its smart observations about middle class mores. In addition to boasting a cast that included Anna Maxwell Martin, Diane Morga...

   NOSFERATU (Robert Eggers) It began life as  FW Murnau's 1922 German Expressionist silent cinema classic  - an unauthorised version of Bram Stoker's vampire tale 'Dracula'. It has since inspired a 1977 Spanish dubbed version of Murnau's film, a  Werner Herzog remake  two years later and a  Kickstarter funded 2023 version  which took nine years to reach the screen. Now we have a chilly remake from Robert Eggers of ' The Witch ,' ' The Lighthouse ' and ' The Northman ' fame  and it has been burning up the box office since New Year's Day. Set in 19th Century Germany and staring Lily Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe and Bill Skarsgard, Eggers' film evokes memories of William Friedkin's ' The Exorcist '. Depp plays Ellen, a young woman married to Hoult's Thomas Hutter, who in her teenage years stirred a malevolent supernatural spirit while trying to overcome her loneliness. When Thomas is asked by his employer, Sim...

ANUJA (Adam J Graves) It's very easy to overlook the short film categories during awards season but to do so means you miss out on real gems. Take Adam J Graves' 'Anuja,' for example. A 22 minute film in Hindi about orphaned sisters looking after each other on the streets of Delhi, it is a surprisingly sweet confection despite its gritty subject matter. Sajda Pathan is the Anuja of the title, a nine year old worker in a garment sweatshop who sleeps rough with her sister, Ananya Shanbhag's Palak and also happens to be a maths genius. Summoned to her boss, Nagesh Bhonsle's Mr Verma's office, she watches him resist Gushan Walia's educator Mr Mishra's efforts to have her sit an exam that could open up educational opportunities for her that will lead to a better life. Palak is also keen for Anuja to grab this opportunity but the kicker is it will cost her 400 rupees to sit the exam. With Palak hitting on an ingenious scheme to raise the money, will Anuja ...

BOYZONE: NO MATTER WHAT It's an age old story - pop impresarios working boy or girl bands to the bone and squeezing every drop of cash from them with little regard for their mental health. However few documentaries have been as raw in the way they expose the damage done as Sky Documentaries' 'Boyzone: No Matter What'. As boy bands go, Dublin five piece Boyzone were nothing special - filling a gap in the 1990s as an alternative to Take That with mostly bland cover versions of pop standards. However Sophie Oliver's documentary is anything but bland, revealing a group that was cynically media managed by Louis Walsh with little care for the damage it was doing to his charges. The four surviving members of the group - Ronan Keating, Shane Lynch, Keith Duffy and Mikey Graham - speak with refreshing honesty about the highs and lows of being in Boyzone, the snubs, the desperate ambition, the jealousies, the media exploitation and the heartache of losing fellow member Stephe...