The King's Speech Wins 7 in Bafta Sweep

Perhaps unsurprisingly, The King's Speech dominated at last night's Bafta ceremony, taking seven of the fourteen awards for which it was nominated. Among the awards given to the film were Supporting Actor and Actress nods to Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter respectively, Original Score, Original Screenplay for David Seidler's script and Outstanding British Film. As expected, Colin Firth picked up his second consecutive Leading Actor award for his portrayal of King George VI, battling with his speech impediment. Most importantly though, the movie received the top award for Best Film, putting it ahead of rival The Social Network as the favourite to win the big award in a fortnight's time at the Oscars.

The Facebook movie did get one over The King's Speech though, with David Fincher beating out Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), Christopher Nolan (Inception), Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) and Danny Boyle (127 Hours) in the Directing category. This gives him hope that he'll receive his first Oscar on February 27th, and perhaps an indication that his film may fare better with American voters than the film about the British monarchy. The Social Network also picked up the Adapted Screenplay award for Aaron Sorkin's script and its third of the night for Editing.

Natalie Portman received the Leading Actress award for her performance in the ballet thriller Black Swan. Of course there were no prizes for guessing that Pixar picked up another Animated Film award for Toy Story 3. Roger Deakins took the Cinematography gong for his work on True Grit, making it highly likely that he'll pick up his first Oscar after nine previous nominations. Chris Morris beat out Monsters director/writer/SFX expert Garth Edwards and graffiti artist Banksy (Exit Through the Giftshop) to win Outstanding British Debut for his comedy about suicide bombers, Four Lions. Christopher Nolan's Inception picked up three awards in technical categories Production Design, Sound and Special Visual Effects while Swedish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo took Film Not in the English Language.