The Oscars: David Loftus

I feel like a broken record, having to report that I did not watch the Academy Award ceremony, had seen very few of the movies nominated in the primary award categories, and rarely have gone out of my way in the past to see a movie just because it won an Oscar.

I think it’s a good bet that Bullock’s performance was not any better than Mirren’s or Streep’s, if for no other reason than The Blind Side is more the typical feel-good Hallmark Theater-style movie the Academy tends to favor, but you couldn’t say the other two actresses were snubbed because they already have statuettes (Streep has two), and Bullock was due … the same way Cate Blanchett was overdue in 2004 (and won for an unremarkable performance in The Aviator), Dennis Hopper was due for Blue Velvet and got a nomination for Hoosiers instead, and Johnny Depp is overdue NOW. Someone is inevitably snubbed every year, and if it was James Cameron in 2010, I’m fine with that. I’ve never hated anything he’s done -- just found his work overblown and overpraised. And to be honest, we probably should cut him some slack just now, since he convinced his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow to direct The Hurt Locker when she had been planning to do something else; and after she finished it he said, “I think this could be the Platoon for the Iraq War.”

I did go out of my way to see The Hurt Locker back on December 23, and felt it was one of the finest movies of the year. I wouldn’t call it an immortal piece of work -- if I’d seen a lot of other movies made in 2009, I might have liked another more -- but I’m very glad it beat out Avatar. Cameron’s epic wasn’t a bad film, just not the greatest thing since sliced bread, let alone “the future of film.” Maybe now The Hurt Locker will finally make back its investors’ money. At the time it won six Academy Awards, the movie had been out for more than half a year and had still made only $13 million, which is far less than Avatar continues to make each week, and probably even on many single days. As Roger Ebert tweeted the other day, “! > $.”