I am pulling for Bigelow, though. I agree that she’s got a nice body of work that isn’t appreciated enough.

We had a friend over when we watched Hurt Locker who is an ex Sniper and the entire scene annoyed him. He liked the rest of the film.

Apparently they were all terrible shots, they used the wrong sight on the riffle and from the perspective of the bullet, the building may as well not have been there.

He loved the rest of it.

I’ve not seen all the nominees yet but of those I have seen, The Hurt Locker stands out by a country mile. It was one of the most compelling movies I’ve seen in ages. And Bigelow deserves the best director nod.

Christoph Waltz should win and probably will win. It was an amazing role and it’s a great Oscar fairy story for an unknown German actor in his 50s to appear on the scene and win.

I fear that Avatar will win everything – and it shouldn’t. It is an amazing technical feat, but it was a dull film.

That’s actually intentional, and is a nod to South African humour at the same time (at least that’s what the wife tells me and she grew up there). “English” South Africans, i.e. white South Africans who aren’t Afrikaners tell jokes about “thick” Afrikaners in exactly the same way that the English would tell Irish jokes starting “Paddy did …” and some other groups tell Polish, Finnish or (insert stereotype).

Only in South Africa the jokes are all about a thick Afrikaner called Van De Merwe. His portrayal at the start of the movie is as much a nod to the allegory of apartheid and what actually happened in District 6 in Jo’berg as the rest of the movie. Frankly, I don’t think it would have worked as well if he’d been anything other as a stereotype at the start.

At least Bigelow will win for Best Director and actually deserve it. http://tinyurl.com/ybskk3u Unfortunately that will just lead to speculation that she won it because she’s only the fourth woman to be nominated in that category.

Cheese and crackers, enough with the BATTLE OF THE EXES already!

Yes,, I know it’s a punny headline – and an easy lede — but Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow divorced eighteen years ago, and it was obviously amicable enough (and they can separate their professional and personal relationships) that she went on to direct Strange Days, which was co-written and produced by her ex. As far as I’m aware, the pair have never trash-talked each other but sincerely respect the other as film-makers.

Could it be possible that Bigelow got her Oscar nominations for making a damn good film (one among many, IMNSHO), and the personal stuff is not only gratuitous but more than a little patronising?

Fair enough, and I guess Fox is crying all the way to the bank however high maintenance Cameron is. :) All the same, the voting membership of AMPAAS is made up of human beings, and Cameron is remarkably casual about fire-bombing his bridges to people who think they’re actually on his side. When your nine features have grossed just under six point seven billion dollars, nobody is going to bitch you to your face — but they don’t have to like you in the privacy of a ballot box.

The Hurt Locker does not deserve an award because there is nothing worthy about it. It is “just” another Iraq war movie, and there have been other who were much more deserving and had more of a PLOT than it. So I’m sorry, if I’m popping up some bubbles here, but this movie has nothing that makes it a “best movie” and nor “best director” (what filming in the desert? working with Israelis?). Living in Israel, this isn’t as hard as it might sound, so please lets not compare it with the directorial vision of Tarantino, or the fact that Cameron worked on this for 3 years and helped reinvent a part of the cinematic experience as we know it.

Lets get past the movie, past the man or woman, and judge the MOVIE and not the political interests behind the Oscars.