Jordan Peele's satirical horror flick Get Out triumphed Saturday at the Spirit Awards – the latest in a string of honours the film has picked up, with the Oscars just one day away.
Generating rave reviews from experts and audiences alike, Peele's feature directorial debut – which cost under $5 million (Dh18.36m) to produce – has raked in $255 million at theatres worldwide.
The film – a dark send-up of the African-American experience and of suburban white guilt over racial inequality – follows a young black man, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), who is so nervous about meeting the family of his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) that he fails to realise the menace lurking within their mansion.
"This project didn't start as a statement. It began as me wanting to make a film in my favourite genre," said Peele, who also bagged best director honours.
The Film Independent Spirit Awards, an annual celebration of low-budget cinema that takes place on Santa Monica beach just outside Los Angeles, are seen as an strong indicator of movies that could strike Oscars gold.
Five of the last six best feature winners have gone on to best picture glory at the Academy Awards, including Moonlight, Spotlight and Birdman.
Get Out has four nominations for Sunday's Oscars, including best picture and best director.
Fearless
The prize for best actor went to American-French rising star Timothee Chalamet, whose acclaimed performance as a lovelorn teen in Call Me By Your Name has seen him win numerous awards.
Frances McDormand won best actress, her third Spirit Award, for her searing performance as a rage-filled grieving mother in Martin McDonagh's black comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
"I continue to be amazed that you let me get to the microphone. Are you crazy? One thing I know is that we are allowed to swear," joked McDormand, a mainstay on this year's awards circuit who is the favourite for the Oscar.
"Do you know how hard it has been not to swear for the last couple of months?" she asked, before cursing a blue streak.
Sam Rockwell won best supporting actor for Three Billboards, in which he plays opposite McDormand as a racist, violent police officer.
The best supporting actress prize went to Allison Janney, for playing figure skater Tonya Harding's cold, brutal mother LaVona in Craig Gillespie's acclaimed biopic I, Tonya.
"I play a lot of confused and complicated women, but not anyone this dark. I don't think people think of me that way," Janney said backstage.
"I guess I have to play more dark characters – that's in my future."
Best screenplay for Lady Bird
Coming-of-age tale Call Me by Your Name had led the nominations going into Saturday's event.
The film was nominated in six categories, winning best cinematography and editing ahead of Chalamet's triumph.
Josh and Benny Safdie's heist thriller Good Time tied in second place with nods for directing, editing and three actors, including for its star Robert Pattinson – but went home empty-handed.
Greta Gerwig's comedy Lady Bird – up for best picture at the Oscars – earned her a best screenplay award while real-life couple Emily Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani took best first screenplay for The Big Sick, the comedy story of their romance.
See a gallery of the best dressed from the event:
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Read more:
Where and how to watch the Oscars in the UAE
What the Baftas mean for this year's Oscars race
Oscars 2018: In best-director nominees, a wealth of milestones
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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