We can finally close the book on 2009. The Oscars have come and gone and The Hurt Locker has triumphed, winning Best Picture and five more awards including Best Director and Original Screenplay. I started tracking this season’s Oscar contenders way back in July of 2009 and it has been a long road and each year I’d like to think I learn a little something new about the process.
The first thing to realize is that the likelihood the film you believe to be the best of the year most likely will not win Best Picture and may not be recognized at all. What you have to hope for is that quality wins out over mediocrity in whatever category we are discussing. And for that matter I would say this year’s Oscars were, for the most part, a triumph (a statement regarding the winners and not the show itself, which was sort of blech). It’s the reason I chose the image to the right, The Hurt Locker may have been the big winner, but there’s no way that pic doesn’t just say it all.
The night started off with Christoph Waltz completing the major award triptych with Best Supporting Actor wins at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Award and finally the Oscars for his performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Waltz accepted his award saying, “Everybody helped me find a place… and 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.”
The acting awards, for that matter, following Waltz were no surprise. Jeff Bridges won Best Actor for his role in Crazy Heart. When asked backstage if he hopes the success of this movie will put the fact many fans recognize him purely for The Big Lebowski to rest, he responded, “I’m digging the Dude. You know, I love him. That’s wonderful. You know, the success that he’s had. I was a little disappointed, when it first came out, it didn’t do much. But now we have Lebowski fests and all kinds of things.” The Dude lives on.
Sandra Bullock took home Best Actress, which many expected, and she gave a heartfelt speech. Backstage, when asked about receiving the Oscar as well as a Razzie in the span of two days and what she will do with both awards she said, “They’re going to sit side by side, as they should.” She added, “You know, nothing ever let’s me get too full of myself. It quickly chops me off at the knees, and I like it that way because it just it keeps things stable and they’ll sit side by side in a nice little shelf somewhere, the Razzie maybe on a different shelf, lower.”
And how could you forget Mo’Nique and her win for Precious. After being accused by people all season long for not playing the Oscar game, skipping appearances and only showing up to accept awards when the shows suited her schedule she opened her acceptance speech saying, “First, I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics.” Well said, and congratulations.
Then comes Best Director, an award that has never fallen in the hands of a female until tonight as Kathryn Bigelow became the first female director to win the Oscar, and perhaps the best thing about that fact is she ignored it in her acceptance speech. After thanking everyone that helped her along the way she ended her onstage speech saying, “I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men in the military who risk their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world. And may they come home safe.” Class.
The Hurt Locker also won for Best Original Screenplay, Sound Mixing and Editing and Film Editing, which was the late award show indicator it was likely to be the film to win Best Picture.
The Hurt Locker‘s closest competition in terms of awards tally was her ex-husband, James Cameron’s Avatar who’s been a strong supporter of Bigelow and her film from the very beginning. Avatar did what many expected, taking home awards for Visual Effects, Cinematography and Art Direction. It was closely followed by Up (Best Animated Feature), Precious and Crazy Heart as films that won two Oscars each.
The most surprising win of the night was likely Geoffrey Fletcher’s win for Adapted Screenplay for Precious, an award everyone and their mother thought was going to go to Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for Up in the Air, a film that ultimately went home empty handed after being an early season front-runner only to slowly fade.
Perhaps my favorite line of the night came from Juan José Campanell, director of the Oscar-winning Best Foreign Language Film The Secret in Their Eyes when he said, “It is on behalf of a crew and cast that comprise mostly of people that I love and that are very close to my heart that I want to thank the Academy for not considering Na’vi a foreign language.” Even better was the award was presented by two great directors, Pedro Almodovar and Quentin Tarantino.
As far as the show was concerned, it was an okay presentation, but boy did it run long and hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin were pretty much an afterthought following the opening monologue, which also went way too long.
The idea to have a “This is Your Life” style presentation before the lead actor and actress awards was a bit out of left field considering the same thing wasn’t done for the supporting categories or the directing. And then Tom Hanks rushed through the Best Picture presentation without even recapping the nominees.
In an attempt to attract younger viewers the likes of Miley Cyrus, Taylor Lautner, Zac Efron and Kirsten Stewart were used as presenters and then a horror montage and what amounted to a sound featurette for The Dark Knight was used.
The moment I am sure many will remember, though, is the tribute to John Hughes, which included the involvement of Hughes regulars such as Jon Cryer, Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Macaulay Culkin, and Matthew Broderick. I have included the tribute directly below, in two parts, in case you missed it.
| Part One | Part Two |
And so the show went. I ended up 18 for 24 on my predictions, which I don’t think is too bad considering I missed all three of the shorts categories, which is quite frustrating considering it was the first year I actually watched the live-action and animated shorts. Then again, they are categories that are simply a crap shoot so what can I say?
You can browse all of the winners alongside the list of nominees on the next page and if you are interested I have uploaded a gallery of over 120 images from the show right here.
Thanks so much for those that stuck with me during my live blog and stuck around all year as I predicted the Oscars and made use of your insight. And if you think tonight’s Oscars mean we are done talking awards for a while guess again. I already have a list of over 45 potential contenders for the coming season and will be asking for additional suggestions early this week and perhaps even as early as Monday afternoon. Be ready!
