If you watch the three movies that garnered the most Academy Award nominations, you will see three strikingly different views of combat.
"The Hurt Locker" presents war -- specifically, the Iraq War -- as pure terror, but also as an adrenaline rush for those engaged in it.
"Avatar" takes U.S. Marines of the future to a distant planet, serving as the muscle for a corporation compelled by profits to drive out the native culture. And the World War II action yarn "Inglourious Basterds" shows a "Dirty Dozen"-like unit of commandos terrorizing Nazis across the French countryside.
"The Hurt Locker" and "Avatar" tied for the lead with nine Oscar nominations, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees Tuesday -- including Best Picture and directing nods for ex-spouses Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron, respectively.
"Inglourious Basterds," directed by Quentin Tarantino, received eight nominations. "Precious," the inner-city drama about a girl overcoming poverty and bad parenting, and the timely unemployment comedy-drama "Up in the Air," each received six nominations.
"The Hurt Locker," "Avatar," "Inglourious Basterds," "Precious" and "Up in the Air" all received Best Picture nominations -- and in past years, that would be your competition. This year, though, the motion-picture academy doubled the number of Best Picture nominees to 10 (a tradition revived from the late '30s and early '40s). Rounding out the nominees: The football-themed "The Blind Side," the aliens-among-us thriller "District 9," the coming-of-age drama "An Education," the Coen brothers' Job-like parable "A Serious Man," and Disney/Pixar's airborne adventure "Up."
"The Hurt Locker," which followed the exploits of a bomb-detonation unit in Iraq, could emerge as an Oscar favorite over the mega-blockbuster "Avatar" -- which this weekend surpassed Cameron's "Titanic" in its box-office haul (though the totals aren't adjusted for inflation). "The Hurt Locker" has nominations in the prestige categories -- acting and writing -- that "Avatar" lacks.
A win for Bigelow as director would be historic. No woman has ever won an Oscar for directing, and only three have been nominated before (Lina Wertmuller for "Seven Beauties," Jane Campion for "The Piano" and Sofia Coppola for "Lost in Translation").
Jeremy Renner, who plays the maverick bomb-disposal expert in "The Hurt Locker," received a Best Actor nomination. The favorite, though, is likely to be Jeff Bridges for his role as an alcoholic country singer in "Crazy Heart" (a movie that opens Friday in Salt Lake City). Also nominated: George Clooney as a corporate downsizing expert in "Up in the Air," Colin Firth as a gay man in mourning in "A Single Man," and Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in "Invictus."
Two newcomers whose films debuted at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival were nominated in the Best Actress category: Carey Mulligan, who portrayed an English teen seduced by an older man in "An Education"; and Gabourey Sidibe, for her role as a pregnant, illiterate and abused Harlem girl in "Precious."
They will be up against two former Oscar winners, Meryl Streep for her merry impersonation of Julia Child in "Julie & Julia," and Helen Mirren for portraying the wife of Leo Tolstoy in "The Last Station" (which arrives in Utah Feb. 19). But the favorite right now is Sandra Bullock, whose nomination for playing tough-love mom Leigh Anne Tuohy in "The Blind Side" caps off a banner year for the actress.
Besides the nominations for "Precious" and "An Education," other Sundance titles that scored Oscar praise were the British governmental satire "In the Loop," the home-front drama "The Messenger," and two documentaries featuring smuggled footage: "Burma VJ," which chronicled oppression in Myanmar; and "The Cove," which exposed a secret dolphin slaughter in a Japanese coastal town.
The Oscars will be presented March 7 in Hollywood. (The ceremony was pushed back from its usual February date so as not to compete with the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.) The show will be telecast, starting at 6 p.m. on KTVX, Ch. 4.
The 82nd Academy Awards will be handed out March 7 at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre. The ceremony will be telecast starting at 6 p.m. on ABC (KTVX, Ch. 4, in Utah).
Cheers for 'Cove'
The best thing about getting an Oscar nomination for a documentary about a secret dolphin slaughter in Japan?
"The reason I've been secretly hoping that we would get to this stage, to get to the Oscars, is because it's one of the most -- if not the top-rated -- television shows on Japanese programming," said Louis Psihoyos, director of "The Cove," in a phone interview Tuesday, hours after his film received an Academy Award nomination for documentary feature. "We've been trying to give the oceans a voice, and this amplifies that voice."
"The Cove," which debuted at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Award, exposes the annual slaughter of dolphins at a secluded area near the Japanese coastal village of Taiji. Psihoyos, executive director of the Boulder, Colo., based Oceanic Preservation Society, and his crew of filmmakers and divers went in commando-style to plant hidden cameras and audio gear to get the goods on the killings.
Except for a screening at the Tokyo International Film Festival last fall, "The Cove" has not been seen in Japan. The Japanese government and media work strenuously to stonewall the issue, Psihoyos said.
Talks are ongoing to get "The Cove" distributed in Japanese theaters. "I guarantee it will be seen in Japan by summer," he said.
"It's one thing to have a Western audience say, 'You shouldn't be killing dolphins,'" Psihoyos said. "It's vital to solve this issue that Japanese people have a voice on it."
Sean P. Means
