Remi OBE

While everyone focuses on New Year Honours' gongs for the likes of high profile luvvies such as Helena Bonham Carter and Ronnie Corbett, it's all too easy to ignore perhaps the even more deserved award to backroom boy Remi Adefarasin (below).

Remi who? At 63, he's one of this country's greatest cinematographers, a giant in his profession which makes people like Ms Bonham Carter look good on screen.

The former BBC trainee graduated through every kind of TV - from films (Truly Madly Deeply, Wide Eyed and Legless) and comedy (Chef!,The Fast Show) - to popular British cinema, including Elizabeth and its sequel, About a Boy, Johnny English and Sliding Doors.

The Londoner has also popped back into the small screen from time to time with the epic miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

His latest project, due out later this year, is The Cold Light of Day, a tale of kidnap, co-starring Henry Cavill (the new Superman), Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver.

Classic films on poster for the Oscars

Scenes from classic movies including Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, The Godfather, Gladiator and The Sound of Music feature on the official poster for the 84th Academy Awards which has just been released

The poster is "meant to evoke the emotional connections we all have with the movies", the Oscar organisers said.

In all, films spanning eight decades are showcased alongside the familiar Oscar statuette. Driving Miss Daisy, Giant and Forrest Gump complete the list of movies used in conjunction with the tagline "Celebrate the movies in all of us".

"Whether it's a first date or a holiday gathering with friends or family, movies are a big part of our memory," said Academy president Tom Sherak.

"The Academy Awards not only honour the excellence of these movies but also celebrate what they mean to us as a culture and to each of us individually."

All the films on the poster won the Oscar for best picture apart from Giant, for which George Stevens received the best director award.

The 2012 Academy Awards will be held in Los Angeles on February 26.

Good boy!

The ravest of rave reviews have greeted the performance of one of the stars of The Artist, an early favourite in the race to an Oscar next February. And they've not gone to Jean Dujardin or Bérénice Bejo the human performers who headline the film, but Uggy the Dog who steals it from the pair of them.

Uggy (pictured, extreme left) is - controversially - ineligible for the  main awards of the American Academy. And BAFTA members have already been notified that he cannot stand for their awards in February.

So the terrier will have to content himself with winning The Palm Dog at Cannes last May, and the sheer satisfaction of having acted his way into the hearts of audiences all around the world.

Tarzan's chimp Cheetah dies at 80

Cheetah with Maureen O' Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller

Cheetah the chimpanzee who starred in the Tarzan movies of the early 1930s has died of kidney failure at the age of 80.The Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbour, Florida, said he died of kidney failure on Christmas Eve.

Debbie Cobb, director of the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbour, Florida, where he lived, said that in his retirement the chimp had loved finger painting and seemed particularly attuned to human feelings. He came to the sanctuary from the estate of the star of the Tarzan series, American Olympic gold medal swimmer Johnny Weissmuller during the early 1960s.

Mrs Cobb said Cheetah wasn't a troublemaker, but was known to throw his own waste around if he became upset. 

 

Ron Priest, a sanctuary volunteer, said: "When he didn't like somebody or something that was going on, he would pick up some poop and throw it at them. He could get you at 30 feet with bars in between." 

Chimpanzees in zoos usually live 35 to 45 years but Cheetah was cited in The Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest non-human primate. He outlived both Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan, who played Jane.