I was going to go through the ten Oscar Best Picture nominations, or rather the five that I have seen, but it seemed a bit dry. Instead, I will talk about the two big ones - Best Director and Best Picture - and the other two big ones - Kathryn Bigelow and Jim Cameron.
The films are, of course, The Hurt Locker and Avatar. There isn't a lot to say about Avatar that hasn't been said before - it's the biggest grossing film of all time, it's epic on a scale that is fairly rare these days, and it is terrifically dull.
On the other hand, The Hurt Locker is tense, compact, and did relatively little business. Kathryn Bigelow, who is most known for the offbeat vampire flick Near Dark, and the Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze surfing thriller Point Break. The Hurt Locker compares well to Point Break in terms of the extreme levels of testosterone that it not only has, but also observes.
It is also superior to Avatar, unquestionably. Like I said, the pure tension in the film makes it a truly gripping encounter, and one that can't be forgotten. Avatar, on the other hand, looks very nice, but doesn't do a lot for the 148 mins that you are expected to sit still and enjoy it.
As for the direction involved in the two, I'd say they are fairly equal. Bigelow did an outstanding job of creating tension in something we had already seen, but Cameron's achievement was to create a whole new world. So maybe he did a better job, but he certainly didn't make a better film.
To be honest though, this whole ramble is entirely redundant; it is a foregone conclusion that Avatar will run away with the Best Picture award, and probably Best Director too. It is a sad state of affairs when films like Rachel Getting Married don't even get a look in at the Academy Awards, but that is the world we live in. Maybe all will be different when we take over Pandora.
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