I happened to be at Chalk Farm tube yesterday, waiting for a train. As a bus user, I’m always curious to see what kind of ad campaigns studios are running on the underground for their current releases. At the moment, as a right-thinking film fan, you might be in a state of near-priapic delight at the wealth of prestige movies in cinemas. There’s posters up for The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, Milk and Frost/Nixon, breathlessly described with attention-grabbing quotes like “the feel-good film of the decade”, or “a contender for Best Picture”. It is, of course, January, and rather shamelessly the studios are chucking out their high-calibre movies as we pile headlong into Awards season. It strikes me, not for the first time, to being pretty unfair. In an ideal world, it would make more sense for film fans to be treated to quality movies across the course of the year, rather than clustered together in some faintly undignified race to get them under the noses of various voting academies. I’m probably not alone in having wished this, particularly during the gloomy Summer months when everything’s being choked out by Spider Potter And The Quantum Of Crystal Skulls. Anyway, the BAFTA nominations were announced this morning, which I guess is where I’m heading with this blog. Currently, it’s all about the seemingly unstoppable rise of Slumdog Millionaire, a film that five months ago was in danger of losing its American distributor due to concerns over its apparent lack of commercial prospects. There is something, certainly, about the film’s underdog status that’s clearly struck a chord, both in the UK and US. And it’s a good film, although I think tales of its unfettered brilliance have been greatly exaggerated. I wonder, perhaps, if its success is partly reflective of some broader and maybe more nebulous cultural uplift tied in with Barack Obama’s imminent investiture. Hey, here’s a new President, he’s not George W Bush, now everyone wants to feel good, right? But maybe I’m just looking too deeply into it. Certainly, last year, as the credit crunch bit hard and before Obama’s campaign really took off, there was much Oscar talk circulating around The Dark Knight: a bleak film full of unlikeable and dysfunctional characters that seemed, in its way, to chime with the times. On the subject of The Dark Knight, I don’t buy this posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger chatter, by the way. The internet is full of it – which is perhaps no surprise, considering how vocal a presence the comic book community has online. He’s good, sure, but it’s only a portrayal of a pretty two-dimensional comic book character we’re talking about here. It's hardly Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, say. For my part, I’d hope some sense might prevail when the BAFTAs (and, also, the Oscars) are handed out. You can give Mickey Rourke as many awards as you like for his extraordinary work in The Wrestler, and I’m torn equally between Angelina Jolie for Changeling and Kristen Scott Thomas for I’ve Loved You So Long. I don’t think Kate Winslet is particularly good in either The Reader or Revolutionary Road, which is a truly wretched film. Robert Downey Jr was fantastic in Tropic Thunder and Tilda Swinton much better in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button than she was in Burn After Reading. In terms of Best Film, well, out of all those nominated the one I liked the best was Frost/Nixon. It’s an intelligent and witty film with strong, measured performances that brought what might at first appear a fairly un-sexy subject to life with great skill. But I don't think it'll win. I would have liked excellent Terence Davies' Of Time And The City receive greater recognition, but there. Still, as they say, all will be revealed on February 8. Can you bear the suspense..? At least Masterchef’s back to keep our minds from moithering on such matters too much. Here's the nominations in the key BAFTA categories anyway: BEST FILM THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON FROST/NIXON MILK THE READER SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM HUNGER IN BRUGES MAMMA MIA! MAN ON WIRE SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE DIRECTOR CHANGELING Clint Eastwood THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON David Fincher FROST/NIXON Ron Howard THE READER Stephen Daldry SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE Danny Boyle LEADING ACTOR FRANK LANGELLA Frost/Nixon DEV PATEL Slumdog Millionaire SEAN PENN Milk BRAD PITT The Curious Case of Benjamin Button MICKEY ROURKE The Wrestler LEADING ACTRESS ANGELINA JOLIE Changeling KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS I’ve Loved You So Long MERYL STREEP Doubt KATE WINSLET The Reader KATE WINSLET Revolutionary Road SUPPORTING ACTOR ROBERT DOWNEY JR. Tropic Thunder BRENDAN GLEESON In Bruges PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN Doubt HEATH LEDGER The Dark Knight BRAD PITT Burn After Reading SUPPORTING ACTRESS AMY ADAMS Doubt PENÉLOPE CRUZ Vicky Cristina Barcelona FREIDA PINTO Slumdog Millionaire TILDA SWINTON Burn After Reading MARISA TOMEI The Wrestler

Not for the first time, we’re starting to get an inkling that Neil Young might have been distracted from releasing “Archives” again. The latest digression was signalled on his run of American shows before Christmas, when something like ten new songs gradually made their way into the setlist. Now, though, a finished track called “Fork In The Road” has turned up, streamed at www.neilyoung.com. Like a lot of the new songs previewed on the tour, “Fork In The Road” is essentially a driving song, presumably connected with the Linc-Volt car project which Young has been alluding to for a while now. And if you were wary of “Living With War”’s somewhat unvarnished feel, you should be aware that, on first acquaintance, “Fork In The Road” makes that set seem glossy and considered. It is, then, a ramshackle roadhouse chugger pitched somewhere between Canned Heat, “Roadrunner” and some weird downhome Velvets, with Young intoning the not-tremendously profound lyrics in a droll, comparatively deep register. The opening lines seem to be, interestingly, “Got a pot belly, it’s not too big/ It gets in my way, when I’m driving my rig.” “Fork In The Road” is kind of fun, though it might alarm a good few Neil fans when heard in conjunction with those other new songs – live versions are all over the internet, if you’re interested. It’s certainly alarmed plenty of our friends over at Thrasher’s Wheat, whose consternation has been collated into a useful article on Young’s latest diversion there. I can see a lot of their points, not least that this seems notably rudimentary, facile stuff even for someone like Young who has made such a virtue of simplicity. What I find amusing, though, is that what “Fork In The Road” and the other Linc-Volt songs seem to represent, in a way, is a kind of gold standard for a lot of rock fans. I often whinge a little here about the doomed and wrong-headed pursuit in certain critical/fannish circles for an idea of authenticity in music, for a direct and unmediated expression of the artist’s passionate creative spark. I always believe that kind of spontaneous art only really occurs in the world of free improvised music, but it strikes me that these Neil Young songs might be just about as close to it as rock ever gets: evidently written swiftly, on the hoof, and recorded – in “Fork In The Road” – with even less rehearsal and preparation than usual. It feels more or less like an instant composition, and one which, again even by Young’s bloody-minded standards, makes no allowances for his listeners whatsoever. We’re accustomed to thinking that songs about love, bereavement and so on are the most acutely personal that a writer can produce – hence the veneration of, say, “Tonight’s The Night”. But those are universal themes, as opposed to some fetishistic private celebration of some trashed old cars, set to cranky, dumb garage boogie. You want a direct insight into Neil Young’s head? Maybe here it is. All things considered, I’d probably rather be listening to “Archives” this morning. But frustration aside, it’s hard not to find new ways of admiring the old curmudgeon as this glut of creativity/farce unravels.