This Sunday, the Hilton London Metropole was to have hosted the 2008 Screen Nation Awards, known in the industry as Britain's "black Baftas". But the lavish event, honouring Whoopi Goldberg, Don Warrington and Noel Clarke's Adulthood, has been called off after the organisers lost 30% of their funding.

A key unnamed partner, hit hard by the economic slowdown, has pulled out of the awards, which are dedicated to championing black performers. Charles Thompson founded the awards six years ago, protesting that black performers were not given their fair share of gongs at traditional shows. On the awards' official website, he vows to seek alternative backers and to reschedule the event early next year.

"I regret to announce this sudden setback to the awards, however I promise and assure you that the extraordinary pool of outstanding talent that we have here in the UK, will be celebrated at a later date," he said in the statement.

As well as honouring Goldberg, Warrington and Clarke for special achievements in film and TV, other nominees included Chiwetel Ejiofor, Idris Elba, Leona Lewis and Estelle.

Actor and television presenter Josie D'Arby had been down to host the event, with a guest list including Ken Livingstone and Jonathan Ross. It was scheduled for broadcast on the Community Channel in the new year.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Danny Leigh: Visiting an iconic movie location in real life can be an unsettling and powerful experience

Full list of winners

ITV network news editor Deborah Turness was among the winners at the Women in Film and Television Awards, as Julie Walters won the lifetime achievement prize. By Caitlin Fitzsimmons

Highlights from Julie Walters' prolific acting career to mark her lifetime achievement prize at the Women in Television and Film Awards 2008

The actor, who played a Playboy Playmate in the summer hit, has signed up for a female buddy movie and a romantic comedy

As the 'Oscar corridor' - the lucrative period between the nominations and the prize-giving - draws ever closer, these prestigious small films could prevail over bigger-budget remakes

Ben Child: Many new films are being shot in 3D and multiplexes are converting their screens. So where does that leave films shot in two dimensions?

The board's picks are seen as among the earliest indicators of Oscar success

Xan Brooks sees a startling Tilda Swinton in Erick Zonca's wild, at times undisciplined film, Julia

To mark the release of Tom Shankland's really rather scary The Children, let Xan Brooks take you by the hand to revisit some of the creepiest kiddies ever seen on screen

Obituary: Oscar-nominated screenwriter best known for four 1950s Hitchcock films

Not in truth the most comprehensible or riveting of tales, but it doesn't matter much: this is another chance to root around in the imagination of Guillermo del Toro.

An enormous profusion of inventive grotesques could give a small child a year full of nightmares. But in the hands of Del Toro and the comic character's originator, Mike Mignola, it's always humorous as well as scary.

True to form, Del Toro gives us lots of eyes in the wrong places (here it's wings) and masses of odd inventions. The titular golden army are a typically dangerous one, balanced out by millions of evil insects, which make your average cockroach seem benign by comparison.

The DVD is a splendid package too, with commentaries from Jeffrey Tambor (playing practically the only normal human on show), Luke Goss and fiery Selma Blair in addition to Del Toro's own, and a fascinating look at the vivid visuals in the director's notebook and how they turned out on screen.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

A taste of la vie sur Mars is what Jacques Maillot gives us with his rough-and-ready cop thriller from 1970s France, full of fag-smoking, big hairstyles, retro-porn dirty bits and unending tribal warfare between cops and bad guys which allowed for a good deal of fraternisation with the enemy.

Guillaume Canet and François Cluzet play brothers François and Gaby. The first is a cop having a love affair with the wife of a villain he's just put inside; the other is a fully-fledged criminal just out of the joint, notionally going straight, but soon headed back to his old ways.

The result is an enjoyably rich, gamey stew of crime and family betrayal - and there's an interesting mention of 70s French super-crim Jacques Mesrine, the subject of a new biopic starring Vincent Cassel.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's movie about Hurricane Katrina is, in its way, quite as powerful as Spike Lee's massive documentary on the subject.

They follow the fortunes of New Orleans rapper Kimberly Rivers Roberts and quote from the first-person camcorder record she and her husband made of the catastrophe.

It wasn't until seeing this movie that I grasped the full horror of how many people drowned in their own homes: extended families with babies climbed into attics to evade the rising floodwater - and desperately tried to break holes in their ceilings as the water continued inexorably to climb.

The sheer incompetence and complacency of President Bush is, once again, scalp-pricklingly shameful.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds