In Contention

By Josh Spiegel

March 8, 2010

Laaaaaaap dance.

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All of the awards have gone out, the champagne is being toasted, the speeches have been given, and the jokes have fallen flat; the jokes, of course, fell extremely flat. Yes, friends, the 82nd annual Academy Awards ceremony has finally taken place, last night, with The Hurt Locker coming out on top with six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. Avatar, the movie with the most nominations (nine), only ended up with technical awards, as James Cameron, supposed king of the world, lost out big on Director and Picture, losing to his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow. The supposed controversy of The Hurt Locker being too real or too fake was all moot in the end. Let's go through the results, shall we?

The winner for Best Supporting Actor was a massive surprise. Coming out of nowhere was...oh, wait, this isn't a parallel universe. The winner was the same man who's won every other award: Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. As with his other speeches, Waltz was eloquent and emotional, and strongly deserved. You'll see him next squaring off against Seth Rogen in The Green Hornet, which should be...interesting. The Best Supporting Actress winner was just as unsurprising: Mo'Nique for her work in Precious. If I've been telling you anything over the last three months, it's that Waltz and Mo'Nique would win, and the other nominees would practice their polite smiling and clapping. There were literally no surprises in these two awards.

The Oscar for Best Animated Feature went to Up, another major non-surprise. By the way, in case you weren't aware, get used to that theme, folks. The surprises are few and far between. Up's director, Pete Docter, got his first Oscar, after his past directing effort, Monsters, Inc., lost to Shrek. Yes, that series is now terrible, but at least Shrek was good. Anyway, congratulations to the team at Pixar, for continuing to make me envy them.




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The Best Original Song winner was, yes, another big shock (sarcasm intended firmly): The Weary Kind, from Crazy Heart. The winners were T Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham. The other nominees, while deserving, especially the two songs from The Princess and the Frog, stood no chance against the onslaught of Crazy Heart and the two songwriters. I liked this song, but the other original songs in the film were better and more memorable; still, when Colin Farrell and Jeff Bridges sing a song onscreen, it helps.

Mark Boal took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, for his work in The Hurt Locker. Obviously, this was not as much of a given; Quentin Tarantino's script for Inglourious Basterds was just as possible a winner. What's more, considering all of the recent snafus that The Hurt Locker is running into, this win was pretty solid and important. Boal's work is subtle in the film, but strong and important. It's a well-deserved win, made all the more bittersweet by his announcement during his acceptance speech that his father passed away. Congratulations to Mr. Boal.


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