The Artist dominated the BAFTA awards this evening — Best Picture, Best Director (Michel Hazanavicius), Best Actor (Jean Dujardin), Best Original Screenplay (Hazanavicius), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Music. With each successive award I felt number and number. I am berefet of all feeling…nothing. I’m a cypher sitting in a leather chair.

Previous Update (1:32 pm Pacific): Nobody with their mind and feet half-planted in the real, non-movie-blogging world (like me) gives a damn about the BAFTA awards. The BBC America broadcast is delayed until this evening, and you can’t even watch a live feed online. There’s Twitter, of course, and the blow-by-blows on various film fanatic sites (like In Contention) but who cares anyway? It’s already turning into a celebration of Artist and Hugo love.

All right, I can support the BAFTA guys giving Tyrannosaur director Paddy Considine their Best British Debut award…fine.

Wait…the BAFTAs gave Best Foreign Language Film to Pedro Almodovar‘s The Skin I Live In? Almodovar never makes a bad film and I enjoyed Skin as far as it went, but c’mon — it’s unmistakably one of his lesser efforts. And they blew off A Separation to do this?

Guillaume Schiffman‘s black-and-white cinematography for The Artist was won a BAFTA award. But it didn’t offer a scrupulous recreation of a late 1920s film, which is what The Artist is all about (revisitings, film styles, getting it right) and what it should have been. It looks a little too glossy and fluid. 1920s films were much more static and antiquated looking.

THE WINNERS:

Best Film: The Artist.

Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, The Artist. Wells response: Sigh..whatever.

Best Actress: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady. Wells response: Maybe this isn’t such a shocker. The Brits voted for a story that portrayed, or at least reflected, their own history and culture. A vot efor Viola Davis would have obviously been a vote portraying or reflecting American culture, so there you are,

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist. Wells response: Why not a BAFTA award for director of most widely-liked default consensus film of 2011?

Best Animated Film: Rango. Wells response: I understood and appreicated of what Rango was up to, but I was bored.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Wells response: Brits standing up for their own.

Best Documentary: Senna. Wells response: Why not?

Rising Star Award: Adam Deacon. Wells response: Who’s Adam Deacon?

Best Original Screenplay: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist. Wells response: Better than the original screenplays of Midnight in Paris or A Separation? This is lunacy.

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help. Wells response: This means Meryl’s not winning Best Actress…right?

Best British Film: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners. Wells response: Fine.

Best Production Design: Hugo

Best British Debut: Paddy Considine, Tyrannosaur

Best Foreign Language Film: The Skin I Live In. Wells response: They’re serious?

Best Makeup: The Iron Lady.

Best Costume Design: The Artist. Wells response: Those 1920s outfits were wonderful! I loved them! So accurate!

Best Cinematography: The Artist. Wells response: Not that special, certainly not deserved.

Best Film Editing: Senna.

Best Sound: Hugo.

Best Music: The Artist. Wells response: Give me a break!

Best Visual Effects: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

Nobody cares!

The BAFTAs are not even being broadcast live in the UK. They take the raw footage and edit it all into a two-hour package — and then the show is broadcast a couple of hours later.

This is footage of an East of Eden screen test or reharsal of some kind between James Dean and Richard Davalos, who played Aaron, the older brother of Dean’s character, Cal. Impressions?

It’s very difficult to summon the energy to do this as it’s very hard to care, but here are my picks for likely Oscar winners in the major categories:

BEST PICTURE: The Artist (p: Thomas Langmann). SHOULD WIN: Moneyball (p: Michael De Luca, Rachael Horovitz, Brad Pitt) or The Descendants (p: Jim Burke, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor). SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Drive.

BEST DIRECTOR: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist. SHOULD WIN: Alexander Payne, The Descendants. SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Bennett MIller, Moneyball.

BEST ACTOR: Jean Dujardin, The Artist. SHOULD WIN: Brad Pitt, Moneyball or Demian Bichir, A Better Life or George Clooney, The Descendants.

BEST ACTRESS: Viola Davis, The Help.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR : Christopher Plummer, Beginners. SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Albert Brooks, Drive.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Octavia Spencer, The Help.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Moneyball, screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, story by Stan Chervin, OR The Descendants, screenplay by Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash. (Undecided)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Margin Call, written by J.C. Chandor, OR A Separation, written by Asghar Farhadi. (Undecided)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Rango, d: Gore Verbinski.

BEST DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE): Undefeated, p/d: TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Emmanuel Lubezki, The Tree of Life.

BEST FILM EDITING: Christopher Tellefsen, Moneyball.

It took her many years to get there, but Whitney Houston, 48, has finally bought it.

Five or ten minutes ago Associated Press music industry reporter Nekesa Mumbi Moody reported Houston’s death, stating that publicist Kristen Foster has confirmed. Deadline‘s Nikki Finke is reporting that Houston died at the Beverly Hilton hotel. The 911 call came in around 3:25 pm this afternoon.

The specific cause of the pop singer’s death is unclear, but c’mon…this has been in the cards for ages. Houston’s rep as a poster girl for drug abuse long ago eclipsed her fame as a singer.

Here’s Gerrick D. Kennedy‘s L.A. Times/”Hiss and Pop” 2.11 piece about Houston doing “handstands by the pool” a couple of days ago.

TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman is passing along “initial media reports [that] Houston was found by the veteran music producer Clive Davis, but few details [are] immediately available. Houston was reportedly in Los Angeles for a party that Davis holds every year on the eve of the Grammys.”

Here’s a 9.13.01 ABC News story in which publicist Nancy Setlzer denied reports of her death following Houston’s “shockingly thin, even skeletal” appearance at a Michael Jackson tribute concert at Madison Square Garden.

Honestly? The only Houston song I ever responded to was “How Will I Know?” I kinda liked her in The Bodyguard. I’m sorry for her friends and family but I feel no pity or sadness for a person who has been so self-destructive for so long and with such commitment.

Many people are shocked by Houston’s death, but find me one person who is genuinely surprised. The New York Times/AP report mentions “drug use” and “erratic behavior” in the first paragraph. What are they trying to do, Barnes78 — jump the gun?

Houston also appeared in Waiting To Exhale and The Preacher’s Wife. She also costarred in an unreleased Salim Akil film called Sparkle, which the IMDB says is about “three sisters [who have formed] a successful singing group and must deal with the fallout of fame and drugs.” Houston plays a character named Emma.

Houston confessed to drug problems (cocaine, etc.) in a 2002 Diane Sawyer interview. “The biggest devil is me,” she told Sawyer. “I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy.” Houston went into rehab several times, blah blah.

In response to Thursday’s post about What’s Up Tiger Lily?, HE reader John Muller posted this clip yesterday.

I love the visual panache in today’s front page so I figured I’d capture it as everything will shift over in a few days. Dylan’s Damien Demian Bichir ads went up this morning, and I’m really delighted with the red-orange Extremely Loud skin — one of the best-looking ads we’ve ever run.

Either a lady likes me and gives me the green light, or she doesn’t. Either way is cool. Every time I’ve connected with someone I’ve known within minutes if I’m “in” or not. It’s in her eyes or it isn’t. That doesn’t mean we’re instantly whoopsy-doopsy. There are many, many ways you can persuade someone who’s initially attracted to back up or do a 180. But a green light at the outset is never earned. It is either given or not given free of charge. I don’t believe in jumping through hoops and balancing beach balls on my nose in order to charm a woman into wanting to catch a film or whatever. “I can let it all go,” as Robert Mitchum once said. I’m not a salmon swimming upstream.

The Boomers popped out from ’46 to the early ’60s. GenX started to be born in either ’62 or ’64 (although there’s a question if Barack Obama and David Poland are old GenX or young Boomer). GenX ended roughly 20 years later, and then along came GenY in the early to mid ’80s. Except the highly perceptive and literal-minded Bill Moyers doesn’t call them GenY but Millennials, and he says they began to be born in ’78. Who decided that? A generation that began to be born the year that Some Girls was released…odd.

However you slice it and whatever you call them, the GenY Millennials are paupers on the job market, and certainly screwed in terms of college debt.

“There are 80-plus-million Millennials,” Moyers states. “60 percent are white, 14 percent black, 19 percent Latino, five percent Asian, and a smattering of others. Here is something of what they’re up against:

“Unemployment among our youngest adults is almost twice the national average. 25 to 34 year-old male high school graduates are earning 25 percent less than they earned in 1980. Almost 40 percent of young adults say their personal debt increased in the last four years, a lot of that directly related to student loans.

“Back in 1980, college tuition averaged three thousand dollars, adjusted for inflation. Today that average has almost tripled.

“Back then, pell grants covered more than two-thirds of the cost for low income students. Today it’s down to just over one-third. And those who graduate are in debt an average of 25 thousand dollars.”

My oldest son Jett, a gradate of Syracuse University, owes a bit less than four times that amount. He has to make a monthly college loan payment of over $700 bucks.

I’m not convinced that an upcoming BFI Region 2 DVD release of Ken Russell‘s The Devils (due on 3.19.12) is the original, super-notorious, naked nun, “rape of Christ” version. A 2.10 Home Cinema posting says that the DVD is “the original UK X certificate version,” but I smell vagueness. Yes, despite Devils restoration champion Mark Kermode delivering a two-minute introduction plus supplying audio commentary with Russell, editor Michael Bradsell and Paul Joyce.

I’m concerned about an oft-repeated qualification found on more than one film website as well as The Devils‘ Wiki page that “the rights for the film are held by Warner Brothers, and BFI has licensed the X-rated cut from them. Unfortunately, WB will not allow BFI or anyone else to release the film in its entirety at the moment. Additionally, the licensors have prevented BFI from releasing the film on Blu-ray as well as denying them access to the 2004 restoration.”

In other words, the BFI DVD doesn’t sound like it’s the forbidden, full-nasty version, which has never been commercially released. This version was assembled in 2004 by Kermode, Russell and Bradsell, and played twice in London, initially at the Nation Film Theatre in 2004 and again at last April’s 2011 East London Film festival. It also reportedly played at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film in March 2006.

The crazy-naked-nuns version (complete with a Vanessa Redgrave bone masturbation scene) runs 111 minutes. The truncated Warner Bros. version that briefly appeared on iTunes a year or two ago ran 108 minutes and 11 seconds.

If my suspicions are unfounded and this new BFI Region 2 version is the Real “rape of Christ” McCoy, great. I just want to hear it from Kermode or someone who knows the hard specific facts.

Here’s a link to numerous Hollywood Elsewhere pieces on the Devils situation over the last four or five years. This is my favorite HE summary piece. And here’s a fairly thorough rundown on the history of censorship of The Devils.