World's best film

After the crushing dullness of the Baftas and the Oscars, something clearly needs to be done to invigorate awards shows. My feeling is that the Oscars should go all out for cheesy song'n'dance numbers, or get really funny and edgy and make Chris Rock the perpetual host. Then they could stop making all the black people sit in one corner, which they did last week with the Precious gang, creating surely one of the most shameful seating configurations since Rosa Parks got on that bus. Opening up the best picture nominees to 10 didn't really do much, neither making the show more populist nor more intelligent. The only category still open to surprises is the foreign language film, and that clearly needs a radical overhaul if the Oscars wish to remain relevant to where film is at. Maybe what's really needed is a world film awards. I suppose Cannes is a bit like that, but there the fates are decided by a small jury picking from a carefully curated selection. Imagine an ongoing awards race to decide the best performances, writers, films on the planet. It might be fun – as long as they keep the ceremony free of interpretive dance.

Mike Leigh smiles

Trash bumped into Mike Leigh in Soho the other day, looking very happy-go-lucky. The director has just finished his latest film and he seemed pretty pleased with it. As usual, the title, cast and plot had been kept secret, but I can say that it's called Another Year and stars Leigh regulars Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville and Phil Davis. It also features one of Leigh's newer discoveries, Karina Fernandez, the flamenco teacher (above) in Happy-Go-Lucky. The film is clearly ready for Cannes, but have the director and the festival smoothed relations since Vera Drake was snubbed and instead went to Venice and won? From Leigh's guarded response, I suspect they have, and we'll be seeing Another Year, accompanied by its cast and director trotting up the red steps of the Palais in May. And I can't wait.

Falcons follow dolphins

One of the highlights of the Oscars ceremony was a win for dolphin documentary The Cove, which cut away from the film's star Ric O'Barry ("a hero to all species", claimed his producer) as he was unfurling a banner against dolphin slaughter. Next year's hot animal, I predict, will be the falcon. Apparently, falcon smuggling is the fourth most profitable illegal trade, behind people, arms and drugs. The trafficking is so mysterious and lucrative that the birds have been nicknamed "feathered cocaine". This is also the title of a new documentary linking the birds with royal families, the CIA, the KGB, al-Qaida and the oil industry. The film, made by two Icelandic documentarists, swoops in for its premiere at New York's Tribeca film festival next month.