Oscars news
I didn't manage to stay up to the wee small hours to watch the coverage of the Oscars ceremony last night, but a quick scan of the reveals that it's bursting with disability connections. Jamie Foxx scooped the Best Actor gong for his performance in Ray, the Ray Charles biopic, and Spanish movie The Sea Inside won Best Foreign Language Film. However, the big news of the night was undoubtedly the stack of golden statuettes won by Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby.
Now, of course, this particular film has already proved highly controversial amongst many disabled people for its portrayal of a female boxer begging to die after becoming quadraplegic in an accident. But there's worse. If you're blind or hearing impaired and were hoping to check out the movie in the UK - think again. According to the latest email update from - the listings site for accessible cinema - Million Dollar Baby has become one of the very few films to be released in UK cinemas without subtitles or audio description! That's yet another black mark against Dirty Harry's name, then.
Éù Ouch link: Read Access to the silver screen, in which we talk to the editor of yourlocalcinema.com about the huge improvements in access to movies in the UK (well, um, unless you want to see Million Dollar Baby).