No Oscar for Australia, but six for Hurt Locker
There were no Oscars for Australians at the 82nd Academy Awards, but the Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker did receive six awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow – the first woman to ever receive his honour.
The film, distributed in Australia by Village Roadshow, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Script, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Editing. Its strongest rival, Avatar, won three in the technical categories of Art Direction, Cinematography and VFX.
Australian short film Miracle Fish was defeated by The New Tenants; and costume designer Janet Patterson – who openly said she did not care much for awards – saw her work in Bright Star lose to Sandy Powell for The Young Victoria.
Sandra Bullock and Jeff Bridges, both tipped to win the Best Actress and Actor categories respectively, did so unchallenged. Bullock, like Bigelow, also made history as the first person to win a Razzie and an Oscar the same year, and to attend both ceremonies to receive the trophy.
These are the winners of this year’s Oscars, in chronological order:
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Christoph Waltz for Inglorious Basterds.
Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
Up.
Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song
“The Weary Kind” – Crazy Heart.
Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
The Hurt Locker: Mark Boal. Dedicated to “the troops who are still in Iraq”.
1:30pm here it comes, the Best Short categories, with an introduction from top directors discussing the importance of shorts as training ground with its own unique challenges.
Best Short Film, Animated
Logorama.
1:35 Best Documentary Short
Music by Prudence. Ironic, the speech was not as short as the Academy expected.
1:39 Best Short Film, Live Action
The New Tenants. And so Australia missed out on its first nomination of the night. Doesn’t matter, congratulations Luke Doolan!
1:43 Best Achievement in Make-Up
Star Trek. Mostly for Eric Bana’s full-head tattoos.
1:51 Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire: Geoffrey Fletcher. That’s one nervous and excited, almost speechless winner.
2:00 Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Mo’Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.
2:10 Best Achievement in Art Direction
Avatar, Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg. “James Cameron, this Oscar sees you”. Worst speech of the night?
2:14 Best Achievement in Costume Design
The Young Victoria: Sandy Powell. No Oscar for Australia tonight; it seems like the Academy will always vote for royal frocks over anything else.
2:20 Paranormal Activity parody and tribute to horror films. Chucky and Leprechaun at the Oscars… and there’s Freddy, Norman Bates, Rosemary’s Baby and that crazy girl from The Ring too.
2:26 Morgan Freeman explaining the importance of sound effects and editing as part of his Filmmaking for Dummies book deal?
Best Achievement in Sound
The Hurt Locker: Paul N.J. Ottosson. Best hair of the night.
Best Achievement in Sound Editing
The Hurt Locker: Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett. More hair. Wow.
2:38 Best Achievement in Cinematography
Avatar: Mauro Fiore. All that blue paid off.
2:56 Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score
Up: Michael Giacchino
2:58 Best Achievement in Visual Effects
Avatar. Well, duh. Did anyone think the others had a chance?
3:05 Best Documentary, Features
The Cove: Louie Psihoyos. One of those categories where, unfortunately, it’s very unlikely that the audience will get to see all the nominees. They all look fantastic.
3:11 Best Achievement in Editing
The Hurt Locker: Bob Murawski, Chris Innis. Does anyone still doubt that this is the year of The Hurt Locker?
3:18 Best Foreign Language Film
El secreto de sus ojos, directed by Juan José Campanella. Second win for Argentina ever, and one of the most surprising categories. “I want to thank the Academy for not considering Na’vi a foreign language”. Best quote of the night.
3:35 Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart. Another big surprise… not.
3:45 “Gabourey Sidibe, a true American Cinderella”: Oprah Winfrey
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side. Just like Julia Roberts before her, Ms. Bullock has been officially ‘legitimised’ as an actress. Makes history for winning a Razzie and an Oscar in 24 hours, and for receiving both in person. An Oscar and a Razzie; + and – neutralise each other. It’s like she didn’t win anything then.
3:57 Best Achievement in Directing
Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. The competition is over. Hurt Locker wins! Another history-making win, the first female director to ever win this award!
4:00 Best Motion Picture of the Year
The Hurt Locker. Another case of a great independent film that cost sweat and tears to be made, had no ‘commercial potential’ yet has proven everyone wrong.
I’m glad that Up won. Best opening montage of the year.
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Happy for Hurt Locker Best Original Screenplay – fabulous movie – but I don’t agree it is the best writing. Conceptually it is rock solid but there’s a lot of cheating in the script. In my screenwriting class yesterday, it appeared that some great stuff students remembered from the movie was not even in the script that was released by the studio and could very well be ad-libbed by the actors.
How many of the voters DID ACTUALLY READ THE SCREENPLAY???
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Are you doing the winners in bold?
It’s still all italics as far as the eye can see at this stage…
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Bold/Italics issue fixed.
Karel, there are categories where all you can do is hope that the Academy voters actually did their job… but you can’t help but wonder if they even had access to the screenplay, or, in the case of adapted material, if they did an analysis/comparison of the original source and the screenplay.
Having seen Hurt Locker, I’m surprised at the hype it’s getting. Having seen A Single Man, I’m surprised it wasn’t voted for more awards. It was an exceptional movie which took many elements of film and melded them together seamlessly, underscored by an exceptional cast. It was innovative and fresh. I’m still scratching my head about Hurt Locker.
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It’s the Iraq war element that makes it relevant to Americans, much more than a heartbroken gay professor.
Boo. I wanted George Clooney, not Jeff Bridges.
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what’s that…three for Avatar and four for Hurt Locker so far?
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George Clooney has one already. he won’t get a best actor Oscar in a long time (if ever).
Mmmmm Miguel…if you’re right, then those Americans who are part of the Academy have again failed to distinguish between talent and simply what moves them personally. It’s easy to confuse the two I know, but those who vote in this can’t afford to be swayed so easily. But perhaps you are right. I should remind myself that this whole thing is really centred on the USA anyway and what they think.
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Hurt Locker will become one of those untouchable films that everybody will say are amazing, even if they don’t know why.
Out of the nominees, Precious is a much more worthy contender. Again, that’s the thing with art; yours, mine and theirs are just opinions.
I’m not watching the TV, can you give me a bit of a sense of how Steve Martin and wotsis name are doing at presenting, Miguel?
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Come on Sandra Bullock!!!!
Most fantastic actress of these times..Always over missed.
Show ’em your stuff Ms Bullock.
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They’re doing a decent job, but I don’t think we’ll see two co-hosts again. Alec Baldwin was an odd choice.
Yes, massively over missed.
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The Hurt Locker – Best Picture?
What a load of propaganda bullshit.
It’s not even a very good story with predictable, average acting.
Maybe it’s America’s way of trying to deal with the fact that they aren’t actually at war, they are an occupying force that invaded Iraq under false pretences (Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and were going to use them against us – not).
The film tries to make us feel sorry for the opressive; occupying force (The Americans) and all the dangers they have to put up with while they ‘occupy’ Iraq and sap and steal their oil.
Imagine if they made a movie about the Germans occupying France for 4 years in the second world war and tried to make us feel sorry for the German guys, who’s job it was to seek out and destroy the French Underground – no one would be interested.
Hollywood and the Oscars is now just another ‘vehicle’ and recruit for the American industrial military complex and its overseas empire building.
See this movie and the Oscar Best Picture award for what it is – propaganda bullshit.
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Oh no! Hurt Locker it is. Glad I didn’t stay up all evening to watch this, like I would if I was in my native Canada. What a waste of an evening it would have been!
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When Demi Moore walked out on stage, I was all set for a big tear jerker but I only seen abit of Patrick Swayze as the camera crew failed to switch to the screen camera quick enough. I expected to see an honourary piece done on Swayze’s life and a few more words by Demi on behalf of her former co-star would have been good but NO! The Academy just wanted to flip right through all the dead people and get back to the boring stuff. If they had have put as much effort into the In Memorium segment as they put into the Horror segment it would have been Brilliant!
P.S. I wonder if James Cameron is pissed off his ex-wife beat him?
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Memo all aspiring commercial film practitioners.
09 (AUS) figures now out.
AUS commercial sector grossed in excess of $2 billion via box office – sales & rentals – other ancillaries. (but excluding overseas sales).
Local producers? took a mere 5% (of their own local audience?).
Go figure?
Congrats Sandra Bullock – best of both worlds – Razzie & Oscar.
Displaying all the best attributes of her profession (humility) – she showed up – collected – & thanked – both panels.
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You’re right about Sandra Bullock, but Halle Berry did it first – not on the same weekend though. she never fully recovered from the Catwoman fiasco.
So what about the appalling stats Miguel – comment?
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I think it’s an ongoing challenge for many local film industries, not just Australia. But I also think that the Australian film slate for that year was particularly strong and, in my humble opinion, only a few deserved the ‘depressing drama with no market potential’ label.
The problem is beyond the actual content, it’s about audience perception and awareness, and it requires a coordinated effort from all companies, agencies and business partners involved in film (and even TV) production.
For example, the upcoming I Love You Too is formulaic and imperfect. but guess what? so are most romantic comedies, and people still go to see them. we should not give special treatment to Australian films, but we shouldn’t be harder on them than we are on the many terrible movies that the US (and other countries) send our way.
The Hurt Locker winning Best Picture, I can accept that as tinkering with high explosives is such a gut wrenching vehicle for drama. But Best Direction? Definately not as the “Doco” camera feel opens the direction up to bordering on Impro action, ie less control. There were many moments when a CU was needed and some deep personal reactions were covered in WS. It looked like the coverage control was left to the DOP. Much of the acting performance (being male myself) bull-like macho stuff that any reasonable male actor could manage. Other nominations this year contained subtleties in character and performance that would have challenged any director. For action, there were displays of poor timing between movements no editor could fix. No, not good directing. Looks like we Aussies missed out on doing the best bomb disposal story ever. It’s in a book about a group of Aussies in the UK during WW11 who disabled more bombs & mines than any other Allied force. Your hands will tremble when you read Softly Tread The Brave.
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