The Faith And Values Awards

Last night, the Movieguide Faith and Values Awards took place at the Beverly Hilton. Any guesses what the big winner was. That's right: Brokeback Mountain. Oh - only joking.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe won for Best Family Film, as well as being lauded with the John Templeton Foundation Epiphany Prize. Four more films were given nods, as runners-up effectively, in the Family Film category - Madagascar, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and (of course) March of the Penguins.

The Best Mature Audience Film award was given to Pride and Prejudice, with the hangers-on this time being Millions (which is actually a kids film, clearly and deliberately), Batman Begins, The Interpreter and The Great Raid.

Pride and Prejudice? Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story? These aren't films to be singled out for praise.

If you think for one second that these awards were judged on the movies' quality and not their subject matter or socio-political messages, then you've been suckered. The Movieguide Faith and Values Awards have revealed themselves as being even more openly biased than the Oscars.

Most worrying of all is a blatant omission from the nominations - and I'm not making this defence on the basis of the film's quality. Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman, an overtly religious Christian film, has been overlooked entirely.

I wonder if Perry felt snubbed? And I wonder if he considers his omission to be racially motivated?

Perry's films have proven massively successful with audiences of "Faith and Values". That these audiences are predominantly African American might well be the issue that kept him out of the running. Diary of a Mad Black Woman generated tens of millions of dollars profit on a very low investment, seemingly endless press coverage and an even more successful follow-up that is playing in US cinemas right now.

It seems to me that there's some important questions to be answered here.