And on the 82nd ceremony, the Academy rewrites their own history

As the 82nd Oscar ceremony made its way down the red carpet last Sunday, the Academy made history by awarding its first female director for Best Directing (Kathryn Bigelow, of The Hurt Locker) and its first African American screenwriter (Geoffrey Fletcher, of Precious) for Best Adapted Screenplay.



In a year when both ABC and the Academy have ostentatiously fought for viewership and higher ratings, you might expect that the biggest cash cow on the ballot would win Best Picture. However, Academy voters served up the greatest slice of irony by honoring The Hurt Locker, which is now one of the lowest grossing Best Picture winners in years, instead of Avatar. Quality has trumped box office, and Bigelow and her screenwriter, Mark Boal, have the critical community to thank for that. Although I'm disappointed that two of my favorite films of the nominees, Inglourious Basterds and Up in the Air, were left with one and zero Oscars, respectively, I'm happy that The Hurt Locker has defeated some more garish threats from Avatar, which is a technically brilliant picture but not a well-rounded one.

The Hurt Locker managed to rake in six awards—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, and both of the Sound categories (apologies to those who followed my lead and went for Avatar in sound—thought it was a sure thing!). Avatar took three technicals, and Precious took two awards (Best Supporting Actress for Monique and Best Adapted Screenplay for Fletcher). After watching juggernauts like Titanic and even last year's Slumdog Millionaire take away almost the entire pie, I'd say that that's spreading the wealth pretty evenly, which makes for a much more exciting ceremony. With each technical award on deck, I wondered if it would go to Avatar or The Hurt Locker.



But although the Academy commendably got most of the awards right, the producers delivered what was probably the worst telecast I've ever seen live.

My list of grievances:
-The American Idol-style opener with acting nominees onstage waving at the audience.
-Boring, albeit underused hosts
-Poor direction and lighting
-A horror movie montage (note to Producers—New Moon is not a horror film)
-The John Hughes tribute—A prolific director? Yes, but if Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella didn't get this type of treatment, why should John Highes, who has never even been nominated at the Oscars.
-The cutting of Best Original Song performances in favor of an interpretive dance sequence for Best Original Score.
-Overlong Best Actor and Actress tributes, especially when the supporting categories didn't get the same treatment.
-An incomplete In Memoriam segment (um, what about Farrah Fawcett? Bea Arthur?)
-Cutting people off in their speeches. The worst offense was when the orchestra prevented The Cove's director Louie Psihoyos from giving his speech. You can (and should) read what he would have said here.

Surprisingly enough, ratings were up this year. If you tuned in, what did you think?