Awards presented March 7, 2010
The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
All the chatter after Kathryn Bigelow's win as director and producer of
The Hurt Locker was about how her film, which had the lowest box office grosses of any recent best picture winner, aced out the biggest film of the year,
Avatar, which just happened to have been created by her ex-husband. Wags joked that Bigelow had sewed up the Academy's ex-wives vote. (James Cameron, of course, whom
Titanic left with more money than God, cried all the way to the bank.) But this is an exceptional film and Bigelow is an exceptional director, particularly of action movies. The film also won for Mark Boal's screenplay, in both sound categories, and for film editing. Jeremy Renner was nominated and lost, but it's a tribute to his performance that he's the one in the movie we remember, even though his co-stars included Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, and David Morse.
The Hurt Locker is also testimony to the fact that the movies have been coming to terms with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan much faster than they did to the war in Vietnam. On the other hand, the fact that Bigelow is the first woman, and still so far the only one, to win the best director Oscar doesn't speak particularly well about Hollywood.
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