First though, "12 Years a Slave", a film released this week that along with "American Hustle" has attracted ten BAFTA nominations just one behind "Gravity". These nominations include Best Film and Best Actor for Chiwetel Ejiofor. "12 Years a Slave" is an adaptation of the 1853 memoir of Solomon Northup, a free black man living with his family in New York, who was captured and sold into slavery in the south. When he was eventually liberated, Northup described in detail his treatment under various masters. The book became a bestseller in part of the abolitionist debate of the 1850s. British director Steve McQueen has respectfully followed that narrative but imbued it with an intense yet unsentimental subjectivity, bringin
