Mark Kermode on… Kathryn Bigelow, a stylish ruffler of feathers

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From vampire noir to Bin Laden, Point Break to Detroit, the first woman to win an Oscar for best director has never pulled her punches Watching new Jeff Nichols release The Bikeriders , starring Austin Butler and Tom Hardy as 60s Chicago greasers, I was reminded of two other movies: László Benedek’s 1953 Marlon Brando vehicle The Wild One , explicitly cited as an inspiration, and The Loveless , the 1981 feature debut of Kathryn Bigelow , the American film-maker (b.1951) who would go on to become the first woman to win a best director Oscar with her 2008 war drama The Hurt Locker . A symphony of leather-clad posing (with just a touch of Kenneth Anger ), The Loveless was a staple of the late-night circuit in the 80s, often on a double bill with David Lynch’s Eraserhead . Sharing directing credits with Monty Montgomery, Bigelow playfully deconstructed masculinity and machismo in a manner that was one part wry to two parts relish. I remember seeing The Loveless at the Phoenix in East
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The joke’s on Jo Koy: Golden Globes host delivers a bad gig for the ages

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Even in a star-studded list of award show host stinkers, the Filipino-American comedian was special – in that he went down like a lead balloon

Much like Portaloo cleaners and gastroenterologists, award ceremony host is a thankless job that involves handling a lot of crap. The Academy Awards got so used to its hosts tanking (see: a gurning James Franco; Seth MacFarlane singing about boobs) that they briefly stopped hiring them all together before returning to the safe, staid embrace of Jimmy Kimmel (four years in a row now and counting).

Most hosts are either overtly trying to be offensive (see: Ricky Gervais, Macfarlane) that it becomes boring, or so inoffensive that they’re boring (see: Kimmel). On the years someone does an outstanding job (see: Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, Billy Crystal), they mainly serve as a reminder of how terrible everyone else did.

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