THE winners of the Orange British Academy Film Awards (aka the Baftas) are announced this weekend, which means, oh joy, we can forget the Oscars for at least ten minutes. No one questions the wisdom of handing out our most prestigious gongs before the American Academy have their say for the simple reason that “the talent” is more likely to turn up. What price a Bafta if you’ve already pocketed the Oscar? We’ve laboured for decades under the suspicion that no one on the other side of the pond could give a flying fig for our venerable cinema awards. They were arm-wrenchingly heavy consolation prizes with the sex appeal of parking clamps. Now they are fondled and kissed like gold tickets to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

Since 2001, the Baftas have been the last major hurdle to the Oscars and the chief warm-up act to the biggest ceremony in show-business. Unless Hell freezes over, that relationship is destined to remain the same. The proximity of the two events gives the British Academy a power over Hollywood that the latter can’t ignore. It has everything to do with expectation and hype. Paranoia too. Are the Baftas big enough to pollute the votes of American Academy members? I suspect this is wishful thinking. But the 2005 lists of nominees are spookily similar. The differences are telling.

If truth be told, the British voters are every bit as blinkered and biased as their Oscar counterparts. We have a notional belief in the acting ability of Kate Winslet, nominated twice as Best Actress for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Finding Neverland which is frankly embarrassing. She has been the Ellen MacArthur of British cinema ever since she sank with the Titanic. The nomination for her scatty, schizophrenic role as Jim Carrey’s lover in Eternal Sunshine is deserved. But she plays the most unconvincing consumptive I’ve ever seen in Finding Neverland, the Peter Pan “biopic” with Johnny Depp (tipped for Best Actor in both competitions) as the most unlikely J. M. Barrie this side of Brigadoon.

Best Actress is always a revealing bun-fight, if only because the frocks invariably make the front page. But the perversity of this year’s Bafta shortlist is startling. Charlize Theron scooped the Oscar in 2004 for her portrayal of a real-life serial killer in Monster. So what is the British Academy trying to prove by nominating her for the same performance in 2005? A win would go down like cold custard. It’s these annoying, wasteful tics, notably the nit-picking release dates of Oscar contenders in British cinemas, that need to be addressed.

The high-profile casualty this year is Clint Eastwood’s boxing movie, Million Dollar Baby starring himself and Hilary Swank: a certainty for Oscar statues, and a ghost at the 2005 Baftas. It opened too late in Britain to be considered for this year’s awards. These last-gasp releases of red-hot favourites in America are highly exciting, but deeply unfair. It taints the Bafta Awards with that fatal whiff of catch-up.

The commercial pressure to release films simultaneously across all territories will hopefully erase these bizarre discrepancies. But it means that Imelda Staunton has a damn good shout at winning the Best Actress prize for her astonishing performance in Vera Drake. (Swank will be hard to beat at the Oscars.) The director Mike Leigh looks set to enjoy the Bafta night of his life with chances to scoop Best Film, Best Director, and Best Everything Else Award, despite “only” being named in the Best Director and Original Screenplay categories for the Oscars. But his rivals for the plums are as wily as himself. Martin Scorsese has been in more championship dog fights than anyone cares to remember.

His film The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a dashing young Howard Hughes, is the no-expense-spared biography of a super-rich aviation junkie that no one in their right mind could possibly want to date. Walter Salles will try to trump him with one of the most intriguing pictures of the year, or any year; namely The Motorcycle Diaries, a road trip through the armpits of South America with Gael García Bernal as the student Che Guevara. Both directors have terrific chances of stealing a Bafta. Both leading actors have a hand on the famous metal mask. I’m less convinced by the performing rights of Jim Carrey (Eternal Sunshine), Johnny Depp (Finding Neverland), and Jamie Foxx (Ray).

And I’m horrified that The Motorcycle Diaries failed to scrape a place in the Oscar line-up for Best Foreign Film. But I’m equally mortified about Bafta’s dismal treatment of Alexander Payne’s American mid-life comedy, Sideways, which merited just one nomination for Adapted Screenplay.

The pleasure of the Baftas is their ability to make Hollywood squirm. By noisily championing films such as The Motorcycle Diaries, and The Times bfi London Film Festival hit House of Flying Daggers, the British Academy makes sharp points about the health of world cinema. If they can eradicate the barmy feat of nominating award-winning has-beens, and open their eyes to the Paynes of this world, they can use their influence like a wrecking ball. With that much clout a little local bias can go a very long way.

BAFTA NOMINATIONS FOR 2005

Best Film

The Aviator; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Finding Neverland; The Motorcycle Diaries; Vera Drake

Outstanding British Film

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