And the shiny, bald man goes to . . . .

The Hurt Locker! Kathryn Bigelow! The Hurt Locker again!

The 82nd Academy Awards came and went last night in a historic ceremony that saw James Cameron’s-still-smokin-hot-ex become the first female to win the best director Oscar ever! And yes, I felt like I witnessed something special. Her baby The Hurt Locker did a decent job at taking out most of the other major categories, including best picture, with Avatar picking up the sloppy seconds. The full list of winners are:

Best Picture – Hurt Locker
Best Director – Kathryn Bigelow (Hurt Locker)
Best Actress in a Lead Role – Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
Best Actor in a Lead Role – Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds)
Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Mo’Nique (Precious)
Best Animated Feature Film – Up
Best Art Direction – Avatar
Best Cinematography – Avatar
Best Costume Design – The Young Victoria
Best Documentary Feature – The Cove
Best Documentary Short – Music By Prudence
Best Film Editing – Hurt Locker
Best Foreign Language Film – The Secret in their Eyes (Argentina)
Best Makeup – Star Trek
Best Original Score – Up
Best Original Song – Crazy Heart
Best Sound Editing – Hurt Locker
Best Sound Mixing – Hurt Locker
Best Visual Effects – Avatar
Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) – Precious
Best Writing (Original Screenplay) – Hurt Locker

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a brilliant job of hosting, for once sparing the billion plus audience from cringe-worthy `dad’ jokes and cheesiness (hello there Hugh Jackman). Despite the fact I’m still bitter over Moon, Bright Star, Let The Right One In, Abbie Cornish and Sam Rockwell’s exclusions and no major award-upsets, there were still some great moments.

Movie Mazzupial's Top 10 Moments from the 2010 Oscars

The Kanye West-woman

Turns out Kanye West is contagious and his on-stage awards rape spread to this woman, Elinor Burkett. Turns out she was the producer of documentary short Music By Prudence, but left the project over a year ago due to creative differences. That didn’t stop her storming the stage when director Roger Ross Williams went to accept the film’s award for best documentary short. The look on his face is priceless.

Ben Stiller as a Na’vi
Brought a whole new meaning to blue steel didn’t it? In short, Stiller was fucking hilarious presenting the award for best makeup. “It was between this and the Nazi uniform, but this show seemed a little Hitler heavy”. There were reports over the weekend that Sacha Baron Cohen’s Avatar skit was canned because it would be “too controversial” but frankly, I don’t know if he could have done a better job than this. And is it just me or did Stiller bare an uncanny resemblance to Nightcrawler from X-Men?

The horror orchestra tribute

Being a passionate lover of all things horror, I literally fell out of my bean bag when this came on. So, so, so, so BRILLIANT. I think I may have watched it about 11 times by now, but who’s counting?

Sandra Bullock’s acceptance speech

Saturday night Bullock attended the Razzie awards and accepted her gong for worst actress and worst on-screen couple for All About Steve, while handing out DVD’s of the film on stage. Fast forward 24-hours and she collected her career Oscar for The Blind Side with biting wit, humour, and Meryl Streep lesbian jokes. Nicely done. Watch it here.

Everything Gabourey Sidibe did

Thank heavens she got the role of Precious otherwise what hilarious, over-the-top, confidence-addict would I had to laugh at this year? Seriously, everything Sidibe said had me losing it, particularly this comment about Gerard Butler on the red carpet: “I'd hit that. I'm not ashamed. Let's grab a bottle of champagne and see where the night goes.”
And this description of her dress: “If fashion was porn, this would be the money shot.”
Awesome.

Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr present

Dry, Hollywood-targeted humour delivered by arguably the funniest woman in the biz and the comeback king. Part of the charm is their composure. For instance, how the heck did Fey keep a straight face when RDJ said “It's a collaboration between handsome gifted people and sickly little mole people."

Tim Robbins presents Morgan Freeman’s nomination
I’m so over the verbal wanks about what an amazing person so and so is, and how inspirational it was to work with blah blah blah. Listen, an actor can give a great performance without having to be a decent person. So, it was very refreshing when instead of reciting a sonnet to the nominee for whom he was introducing, Tim Robbins just told a decent anecdote on Morgan Freeman said to him about being a friend on the set of The Shawshank Redemption: “Being a friend is about getting the other a cup of coffee, can you do that for me, Ted? It is 'Ted,' isn't it?”

Jeff Bridges acceptance speechHe looked like he was stoned. Sounded like he was stoned. Wobbled like he was stoned. Most importantly, he used the word “groovy”.

Best quote

Steve Martin: "In Inglorious Basterds Christoph Waltz played a Nazi obsessed with finding Jews. Well, Christoph *spread arms, gestures towards the audience*. The motherload!"

Best image
Altogether now, awwwwwww. Let me take this opportunity to throw in a slice from my recent James Cameron interview:

"I think this is not our season with Avatar. We’ve got the financial success. I think this is Kathyrn Bigelow’s season and we’ve seen that very clearly from the other awards ceremonies. Of course she and I are very close friends and I’m celebrating that. That’s her great thing. If they’re lucky every filmmaker goes through it once. I think there’s a very small part of me emotionally that is a little bit disappointed on behalf of my crew who worked so hard and by the way none of the crew on Avatar had anything to do with Titanic, so this is their shot.

But personally, I’m very, very happy for her. I think we’ll all be cheering for her this year. It’s genuine, I’ve produced two of her films she and I have worked together, been friends and you know, working colleagues for over twenty years. She saw Avatar five times as the cut evolved and gave me notes each time. She sent me the script for The Hurt Locker and she was going to make another movie and I told her `no, you have to make this movie’. "