In a night where Oscar history was made The Hurt Locker didn’t just blow away the competition it scrambled their collective molecules and reduced the other nine Best Picture nominees to absolute nothingness. “There is no other way to describe it,” said a visibly emotional Kathryn Bigelow after accepting the Best Director prize from presenter Barbara Streisand. “This is the moment of a lifetime.”
The Iraq War thriller about a bomb disposal team trying to stay alive during the final month of their tour of duty took home six of the Academy Awards of the nine for which it was nominated. Along with the final two golden statues of the evening the film won for Mark Boal’s Original Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing. “You honor me and humble me with this,” said a beaming Boal as he accepted his Oscar, “I was a reporter back from Iraq with the idea for a story about these men on the frontlines of an unpopular war. I thought it might make a movie. The result wildly exceeded my expectations.”
As for the two films considered by most to the eventual champion’s fiercest rivals, both Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and James Cameron’s – Bigelow’s ex-husband – phenomenally successful Avatar had to settle for being nothing more than also-rans. The former took home a lone and much expected Oscar for Best Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz, while the latter had to settle for winning three technical awards for Best Cinematography, Art Direction and Visual Effects. “I always wanted to discover some new continent and I thought I had to go this way and then I was introduced to Quentin Tarantino,” said a giddy Waltz. “Quentin, with his unorthodox methods of navigation, this fearless explorer, took this ship across and brought it in with flying colors and that's why I'm here.”
On the surprise front, Geoffrey Fletcher’s win for Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire was a bit of shock, while Argentina’s The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) beating out both Germany’s The White Ribbon and France’s A Prophet was not even close to expected by anyone. “I don’t know what to say,” said a shocked Fletcher as he eyed his Oscar. “This is for everybody who works on a dream every day [and for the] Precious boys and girls everywhere.”
Jeff Bridges held back tears as he happily took the stage to accept the Best Actor award for Crazy Heart and looked to the sky. “Mom and dad, yeah, look!” he shouted triumphantly, “Whoo! [M]y dad and my mom, they loved show biz so much. I remember my mom, getting all of us kids to entertain at her parties… They loved show biz so much and I feel an extension of them. You know, this, this is honoring them as much as it is me.”
The best speech of the night, however, easily belonged to Sandra Bullock who took home the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in The Blind Side. “Did I really earn this or did I just wear you all down?” she said with an almost shocked grin. “[To] everyone who's shown me kindness when it wasn't fashionable, I thank you. To everyone who was mean to me when it wasn't... George Clooney threw me in a pool years ago; I'm still holding a grudge.”
But not all of her speech came off like a self-effacing comedy routine. “I would like to thank what this film is about for me which are the moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from. Those moms and parents never get thanked. I, in particular, failed to thank one. So, if I can take this moment to thank Helga B. for not letting me ride in cars with boys until I was 18 because she was right, I would've done what she said I was gonna do. For making me practice every day when I got home… she said to be an artist, you had to practice every day. [A]nd for reminding her daughters that there's no race, no religion, no class system, no color, nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else. We are all deserving of love. So, to that trailblazer, who allowed me to have that.”
To no one’s particular surprise Mo'Nique won the Best Supporting Actress award for her mesmerizing turn as a demonic mother in Precious, and while her speech wasn’t as strong as her recent ones accepting awards at the Golden Globes and Friday’s Independent Spirit ceremony it was still memorable. “First, I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics,” she said pointedly, almost as if she were responding to criticism levied her way during the week’s preceding the evening’s telecast. “To my amazing husband Sidney, thank you for showing me that sometimes you have to forego doing what's popular in order to do what's right. And baby, you were so right.”
As for the show itself, other than an extremely satisfying opening monologue hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin didn’t have the best material in the world to work with, many of their jokes falling so flat the silence in the Kodak Theatre was practically deafening. Interpretative dance made its return during a segment honoring the Best Score nominees (Up composer Michael Giacchino won), while an opening song and dance routine with a game Neil Patrick Harris had plenty of energy it didn’t really add all that much to the proceedings. A somber James Taylor sang “In My Life” during the In Memoriam segment, while a large handful of the Brat Pack reunited (along with Matthew Broderick and Macaulay Culkin) took the stage to honor the lovingly revered 1980’s filmmaker John Hughes.
Rounding out the awards Up unsurprisingly took home the golden statue of Best Animated Feature and The Cove swam past the competition to nab the trophy for Best Documentary. “Boy, never did I dream that making a flip book out of my third grade math book would lead to this,” stated an elated Pete Docter. “It was an incredible, incredible adventure making this movie, but the heart of it came from home. My kids, Nicholas and Ellie, and my amazing wife Amanda, you guys are the greatest adventure. Thank you.”
Overall, the 82nd Academy Awards ran just over 210-minutes prompting Steve Martin to exclaim at the end of the evening that things had gone on so long that, “Avatar is now set in the past.” Even so, and while some bits could have been cut to save time (like a poorly constructed salute to horror films) this year’s show moved reasonably well and seldom proved to be boring. Besides, The Hurt Locker making history on multiple fronts pleases me so much I’m more than willing to give this year’s telecast a hearty thumb straight up, next year’s Oscar installment going to have to go a long way to equal my present feelings of happiness.
LIST OF WINNERS:
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, for “Inglourious Basterds”
Best Animated Feature Film: “Up”
Best Original Song: “The Weary Kind (Theme From Crazy Heart),” music and lyric by Ryan Bingham and T-Bone Burnett, for “Crazy Heart”
Best Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, for “The Hurt Locker”
Best Documentary Short: “Music By Prudence”
Best Makeup: “Star Trek”
Best Short Film (Animated): “Logorama”
Best Short Film (Live Action): “The New Tenants”
Best Adapted Screenplay: Goeffrey Fletcher, for “Precious: Based on The Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire”
Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, for “Precious: Based on The Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire”
Best Art Direction: “Avatar”
Best Costume Design: “The Young Victoria”
Best Sound Editing: “The Hurt Locker”
Best Sound Mixing: “The Hurt Locker”
Best Cinematography: “Avatar”
Best Original Score: “Up”
Best Visual Effects: “Avatar”
Best Foreign Language Film: “El Secreto de Sus Ojos”
Best Editing: “The Hurt Locker”
Best Actor: Jeff Bridges “Crazy Heart”
Best Actress: Sandra Bullock “The Blind Side”
Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow “The Hurt Locker”
Best Picture: “The Hurt Locker”
