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By Lee Pfeiffer
Kathryn Bigelow made history with her win as Best Director at the 82nd annual Academy Awards, becoming the first female to be nominated for (and win) Best Director. Her film The Hurt Locker also won Best Picture, defeating her ex-husband James Cameron's over-blown, over-hyped and over-praised Avatar. That film - once considered a shoo-in to sweep the awards - came away with only three Oscars in technical categories.Sandra Bullock was a surprise winner for Best Actress for The Blind Side. Jeff Bridges, considered the favorite to win Best Actor for Crazy Heart, fulfilled the predictions. Mo'Nique won Supporting Actress for Precious and Christoph Waltz won Supporting Actor for Inglourious Basterds.
Cinema Retro doesn't jump on the "Trash Oscar" bandwagon when it comes to analyzing the merits of the show. Let's just face an obvious truth: expecting a short, fast-moving Oscar ceremony is about as useful as awaiting a Best Actress acceptance speech from Pamela Anderson. The shows are predestined to be cinematic equivalent of a Tolstoy novel, so they can only be judged by the degree of entertainment and boredom that occurs within the three-and-a-half hour running time. As usual, I'll provide my observations in a random manner:
- Whoever thought of teaming Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin (co-stars of the very funny and very mature comedy It's Complicated) as co-hosts deserves a medal. They were genuinely hilarious, but it was frustrating to see how little time they had on stage in the course of the show. At the end of the evening, Martin quipped, "The show was so long that Avatar now takes place in the past." The barbs between Martin and Baldwin were always on target and very funny. These guys should get an act together and take it on the road.