The 2012 BAFTA nominations have been officially announced - and Olivia Colman isn't on the list. It's a massive shame for what is undoubtedly the year's greatest performance (read our Tyrannosaur review), especially after Paddy Considine's drama also failed to make the jump from the BAFTA longlist to the shortlist in the "Oustanding British Film" category. At least Steve McQueen's Shame is on the final shortlist there, although he's still sorely missing from the Best Director race.

The Help and War Horse make their customary appearances with 5 nods apiece, but The Iron Lady has close competition from Drive - yes, Drive. Both are sitting on four nominations, with Nicolas Winding Refn even up for both Best Director and Best Film.

That's a great result for what could easily have been an overlooked gem - and it shows that BAFTA aren't afraid to buck the trend a little to reward less obvious candidates. But does it really have to come at the cost of not nominating our own British indies?

It's great to see Michael Fassbender and Gary Oldman up for Best Actor, as well as Bridesmaids up for Best Screenplay and Senna escaping its Documentary field. The Best Newcomer race, too, is rightly full of superb debuts as Joe Cornish, Paddy Considine, Ralph Fiennes and, brilliantly, Black Pond's Will Sharp all share the spotlight. It's just a shame that they're not up for more.

Read on for the full list of BAFTA nominations.

If you've look at the Orange BAFTA rising star nominations for 2012, you'll have noticed something pretty obvious: they're all men.

Manly male men with man-beards or mannishly clean-shaven male faces. Men. Menny men men.

It's an amazing achievement for Adam Deacon, Chris Hemsworth, Chris O'Dowd, Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston. Not just because the Rising Star award is a really nice award - newcomer gongs are a great way to encourage talent - but because they've managed to somehow stop Jessica Chastain getting a nomination.

As we all know after Jessica Chastain's triple-headed win at the New York Film Critics Circle awards (and many others), the King Ghidorah of superb acting is a difficult beast to slay.

It wasn't as if she was on her own, either. Chastain Monster had evolved for BAFTA's Rising Star award, acquiring the heads of Jennifer Lawrence and Felicity Jones to help bite the legs off unsuspecting villagers voters. But the five-headed creature of manhood still managed to triumph. 

So how did they do it?

The BAFTA longlist has been put to shame by BIFA this year.

As it stands at the moment, Shame is one of my favourites from the current crop of British films, with Tyrannosaur, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Submarine, Weekend, The Guard, My Week with Marilyn, Attack the Block, Coriolanus and others all joining the ranks. Guess how many of them will be competing at the BAFTAs for Best Film?

At the moment, potentially two. My Week with Marilyn and Tinker Tailor have been singled out by the BAFTA longlist in their main category, alongside others such as The Iron Lady, We Need to Talk About Kevin and Senna. The rest are the likes of Moneyball, The Descendants, The Artist, Drive and War Horse.

That's not to say these others are bad films, just that the overlooked British ones are equally good. Should BAFTA be supporting its homegrown talent more? In a year when Kill List caused as many waves as Senna (I liked the latter, was frustrated by the former), surely British cinema should be heavily populating that central best-of list? As present, a lot of it is confined to the separate Outstanding British Film of the Year prize.

Kung Fu Panda 2 kicked the UK Box Office's ass this week, taking £6.19m in its first weekend.

That's a massive relief for everyone who thought that The Hangover Part II might grab hold of the top spot, proving that there's nothing as satisfying as seeing an overweight panda punch Bradley Cooper in the face.

Yes, that figure includes previews and 3D ticket prices, but it's still officially a step up from the first Kung Fu Panda, which opened on £6m, so DreamWorks will be fairly chuffed to see their chubby dragon warrior bringing in the kids. With Rio finally down at number ten in the UK charts, expect the Kung Fu Panda to stick around well into the summer holidays.

The Hangover 2 is still terrifyingly successful in second place. It dropped 28% to take under £3m in its third week, but is now on a total of over £26m. Warner Bros will be laughing.

Gemma Arterton. Andrew Garfield. Tom Hardy. Aaron Johnson. Emma Stone. Yes, this year's BAFTA Orange Wednesdays Rising Star Award candidates are all rising and/or mostly risen.

Director: Nigel Cole
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Rosamund Pike, Daniel Mays, Geraldine James, Jaime Winstone
Certificate: 15

"Everybody out!" If you got a quid every time you heard that said in Made in Dagenham, you wouldn't need a pay rise at all. Which, of course, is exactly why the girls at Ford are on strike in the first place: to get equal pay for women. It's a feel-good film in the Full Monty mould, about ordinary people overcoming extraordinary circumstances. But with its production-line approach to storytelling, Nigel Cole's film is more about extraordinary events turned into an ordinary film.

Noel Clarke - aka Mickey from Dr Who, aka writer-director of Adulthood and Kidulthood, aka BAFTA-winning actor, aka producer of independent film - is the UK's most versatile 30-something. After his latest, heist flick 4.3.2.1, he's now looking at branching out into sci-fi noir. More specifically, extending Reign of Death - a short published on YouTube last week.

Directed by Matthew Savage, it's a low-budget effects-package with a period tinge to its mix of robots and black people. The result? Pretty decent, which is why Savage and Clarke are on the hunt for someone to fund a full-length film. Here's what Savage said to Empire Magazine:

"The feature takes place within the same universe as the short, but it’s darker and more sinister in tone... The short was an experiment in creating a visually interesting environment within which to tell our story."

Clarke is enthusiastic about the reception it's had so far: "I optioned Reign Of Death a long time ago, for my company, with a view to getting a feature done," Clarke told the magazine, "not because of the story, but because the effects can be done on a budget, and done well."

Read on for the full 5 minutes of Noel Clarke wearing a hat - as a short, it's not bad at all. As a visual test run, it's phenomenal. Impressive CGI plus a cautionary tale about urinating on robots? Sky Captain eat your heart out. 

Guess who back. Back again. Cameron's back. And this time he's brought with him 8 minutes (count 'em, 8) of never-seen-before footage. Yes, Avatar (or "Avatar: Special Edition") now has an official re-release date: Friday 27th August.

How do you top a box office record? Release the film again and keep on counting. That's pretty much the principle behind James Cameron's extended version of his blockbusting, groundbreaking, blue-loving sci-fi epic. Naturally, it'll only be in 3-D. Because, largely thanks to Avatar, the number of digital 3-D screens in the UK has exploded. Cameron had this to say:

"Audiences repeatedly told me they wanted more of Pandora, and wished they could have stayed there longer. So we’re making that possible. Avatar: Special Edition will be exclusively in 3-D, and will have eight minutes of never before seen footage, including new creatures and action scenes. Whether you already love the movie, or you've never seen it, with this Special Edition, you'll be seeing it like never before."

Unless of course you saw it the first time. Still, eight minutes could be crucial to the plot - perhaps an alternate ending, or that long-mooted sex scene? Either way, Fox are all fired up for the second cinema event of the decade: "It's especially gratifying, because not only has Avatar become one of the most beloved films in history, but after its initial theatrical release, we have been inundated with requests to re-release the film in theaters in 3-D. Equally important, we’re thrilled that Jim Cameron is able to give audiences even more of what they loved."

Will you be in the queue on Friday 27th August? Will the snazzy poster below change your mind?

It's not looking good for The Hurt Locker on Sunday. Not only has one of its producers been banned from the ceremony (due to over-soliciting votes from Academy members), but now, according to The Guardian, Kathryn Bigelow's intense war film is faced with a lawsuit. 

38-year-old Serfeant Jeffrey Sarver, member of the army's Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, has claimed that Jeremy Renner's chraracter, Will James, is based on him. Summit Entertainment have responded that the character is purely fictitious despite Sarver's lawyer's argument that his life has been stolen.

The key is Mark Boal's screenplay, which he wrote after a 2005 stint in Iraq as a journalist for Playboy magazine. The lawsuit states that Sarver gave Boal details like the call-sign "Blaster One", which were then incorporated into the film. Sarver argues that Hollywood has "made billions exploiting veterans", but held off his lawsuit until after the Academy's voting period had finished.

Whether this backlash against Bigelow's movie - made for much less than its heated rival, James Cameron's Avatar - is a result of the contest between the two lead films is a matter of opinion. Bad-mouthing other contenders is a commonplace tradition (although The Hurt Locker seems to have been punished more than most), but a lawsuit is a new form of attack.

Ironically, alongside Sarver's claims that the realistic Hurt Locker is a little too realistic, other soldiers have stepped forward and criticised Mark Boal's screenplay in the LA Times for being "inaccurate" and "sloppy". Last year, Slumdog Milllionaire was heavily slated for supposedly exploiting Indian child actors. It ended up winning Best Picture.

Oh, what a night for British film! The BAFTAs got handed out to a gaggle of great talent tonight. Not only did Duncan Jones get his welcome reward for his Outstanding British Debut, but Colin Firth and Carey Mulligan waltzed off with the Best Actor prizes - a nice score for the home crowd, with both of them fully deserving the win.

Meanwhile, An Education got beaten to Costume and Make-Up by the equally English Young Victoria, spreading the national love around a bit - Fish Tank got a nice surprise as Outstanding British Film, again trumping Lone Scherfig's favourite. Other obvious victories came for Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique as Supporting Actors, with Up bagging both Best Score and Best Animation.

But it was The Hurt Locker which emerged at the top of the heap. Capitalising on its 8 nominations, it wiped the board with rival flick Avatar, nicking the well earned technical awards for Editing and Cinematography, alongside Sound and Original Screenplay (Adapted went to the lovely Up in the Air).

Avatar got Visual Effects and Production Design, but that was it for Cameron's blue box office horse. And rightly so. The Hurt Locker, which won Best Director with ease, ended the night crowned Best Film. There wasn't a single person in the room who could argue with that one.

Kristen Stewart, naturally, won the Rising Star Award - mostly thanks to the frantic support of her fans, all of whom were able to have their say in the public's vote.

Now the attention goes to the Oscars, where tonight's results may foreshadow (but not influence) the outcome across the Atlantic. For America's Academy, Jeff Bridges may be a better fit than Colin Firth and Sandra Bullock has a high chance of winning for The Blind Side. And, even more crucially, Cameron's financial success may well earn Avatar's producers Best Film (although Bigelow's Best Director is pretty much guaranteed now).

But before we get carried away, it's worth reading on for the full list of all our glorious British winners. Or even checking out the (semi-)live tweeting that we were bored enough to bring you. And then you can wonder about who'll win the Oscar. It certainly won't be Kristen Stewart.