So it’s just past half five in the morning and I’m just mulling over a fairly static 82nd Academy Awards. Not the winners - it was always going to be a toss-up between The Hurt Locker and Avatar for Best Picture/Director - but more the general banality of the actual ceremony. After the musical shenanigans of last year, 2010 was a much more genial affair, with hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin playing it awfully safe for its entirety. What happened to offending people like David Letterman and Chris Rock? That was FUNNY, is it not the point to be entertained here? Baldwin did a particularly unspectacular job; not really pulling in many laughs, but not messing up either - probably exactly what broadcasting network ABC wanted.
As for the award winners, well, I'd seen them all coming, with the exception of the Best Adapted Screenplay, which went to Precious - when it should have gone to Up In The Air or In The Loop. Mo’nique deservedly picked up her expected Best Supporting Actress gong, but that was the strong point of that film for me - the performances. The script, a thiny veiled triumph over human adversity story, is also needlessly excessive at points and sometimes, yes, even clichéd. Wins for Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock also aligned with the masses intuition of the past few weeks, while Christoph Waltz was even more of a dead certainty from day one. We all knew this watching, which made the only real excitement that of the two horse race between Avatar and The Hurt Locker.
The Academy knew they were making history by naming Katherine Bigelow as Best Director, while her nearest rival and ex-husband, James Cameron had publically stated he felt she should win. So she did, making The Hurt Locker the lowest grossing Best Picture winner in history, with a box office total of about $19 million worldwide, compared to Avatar’s $2.5 billion and counting. It is a genuinely cracking film, and it deserves the praise that is being heaped upon it, but its success can’t hide the fact that it was a shoddy year for Oscar in general, and the ceremony reflected that. Hopefully we’ll see guys like Conan O Brien, David Letterman or Jon Stewart next year; y’know, people who already do this sort of thing for a living anyway.
