Oscars!

It’s all over but the parties. This year, the story of the Academy Awards was the triumph of The Hurt Locker, the little movie with the big explosions, which took home the Best Picture statue. Kathryn Bigelow herself became the first woman in Hollywood history to be awarded Best Director. When giving the latter prize, Barbra Streisand said, “it’s about time” before reading out Bigelow’s name to thunderous applause.

The Hurt Locker won a total of six awards, including Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing and a Best Original Screenplay award for Mark Boal. Avatar had to content itself with three awards in less prestigious categories: Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects (which were a bit of a no-brainer) but also Best Cinematography, which has been perplexing us here at Indie HQ this am. Since so much was added in post-production, it’s hard to identify where the cinematography ends and the effects begin – we wonder how the judges made that distinction.

In terms of actors grabbing gongs, there were no upsets this year. Jeff Bridges was a lock for Best Actor from the start, as was Sandra Bullock for Best Actress. Both are well-liked Hollywood veterans and there was a strong sense that they’d paid their dues. Both of their films ticked the requisite boxes for “issue picture” (alcoholism, race) as well an Oscar-friendly dollop of heart (or schmaltz, depending on your outlook). As the first woman to headline a movie that broke the £200 million barrier at the US box office, there was also a commercial reason to reward Bullock, who played her part by giving a good-sport speech that began with the words: “Did I really earn this or did I just wear y’all out?” and presenting herself as the epitome of old-school Hollywood glamour.

Likewise, there was little doubt that Christoph Waltz and Mo’Nique would take their turns at the podium. These two won on the strength of their performances alone – Waltz had no profile on the US before this and Mo’Nique was seen solely as a populist comic – and it was nice to some categories being judged purely on merit, without getting a sneaking feeling that the voting was pragmatic or political.

Precious, Crazy Heart and Up took two awards each – Geoffrey Fletcher took a surprise gong for Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious, and ‘The Weary Kind’ by T Bone Burnett took Best Original Song (this was a weird one: wasn’t ‘Flying and Falling’ which Burnett also wrote for the movie a much stronger tune? Why wasn’t it up for nomination?). Up took Best Animated Film and Best Original Score for Michael Giacchino.

Star Trek grabbed a much-deserved award for Best Make-Up (watch the DVD extras to find out exactly how much work went into thise alien rubber heads) and The Young Victoria took Best Costumes.

The big surprise of the evening was the committee’s eschewing of international big-hitters A Prophet and The White Ribbon for Best Foreign Language Film, in favour of the Argentinian movie, The Secret of Their Eyes, which is about the investigation of a 30-year-old murder.

We didn’t catch the entire show but Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin looked a little uneasy in their comic patter and the decision to point out individual nominees for a spot of ridicule provided some slightly uncomfortable moments. The humour highlight of the evening came thanks to Tina Fey and RDJ who announced a screenplay winner in a bit of scripted banter that pitted the contributions of actors: “the handsome talented people” against writers: “sickly mole people”.

Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow and her team. It’s great – and an unusual post-Oscar sensation – to feel that this time, the best picture really did win.

Here is the full list of winners:

Best Picture – The Hurt Locker
Best Director – Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
Best Actor – Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
Best Actress – Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
Best Supporting Actor – Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Best Supporting Actress – Mo'Nique (Precious)
Best Foreign Language Film – The Secret of their Eyes
Best Original Screenplay – Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker)
Best Animated Film – Up
Best Adapted Screenplay – Geoffrey Fletcher (Precious)
Best Art Direction – Avatar
Best Cinematography – Avatar
Best Sound Mixing – The Hurt Locker
Best Sound Editing – The Hurt Locker
Best Original Song – 'The Weary Kind' (theme from Crazy Heart)
Best Original Score – Michael Giacchino (Up)
Best Costumes – The Young Victoria
Best Documentary – The Cove
Best Documentary Short – Music by Prudence
Best Film Editing – The Hurt Locker
Best Make-up – Star Trek
Best Animated Short Film – Logorama
Best Live Action Short Film – The New Tenants
Best Visual Effects – Avatar

You can read our Oscar predictions article here to see how well we guessed.