The 82nd Academy Awards gala was a fairly predictable affair, yielding few surprises overall — and virtually none in the major categories. As the victors stumble home bleary-eyed from celebratory after-parties — or, in the case of scandalized Hurt Locker producer Nicolas Chartier, emerge triumphantly from Academy exile — the losers are left to ponder what went awry. With the Oscars battlefield finally cleared, here’s a brief account of the night’s major casualties:
Quentin Tarantino
In the past, the Best Original Screenplay Oscar often served as a sort of consolation prize for the more daring, independent-minded filmmakers in the field, a way for the Academy to recognize their auteurship while reserving the major categories for more conventional Oscar fare. Tarantino, who earned the award for Pulp Fiction in 1995, when Forrest Gump ran away with virtually everything else, seemed poised for a repeat with Inglourious Basterds. Instead, the Academy gave the surprise nod to Hurt Locker‘s Mark Boal, leaving Best Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz as Basterds‘ lone Oscar winner.
Decorum
Critics branded Elinor Burkett the “Kanye of the Oscars” after the orange-maned harridan interrupted Music of Prudence director Roger Ross Williams’ acceptance speech for Best Documentary Short. Her rambling, barely coherent monologue included a bizarre tribute to the film’s subject, Prudence Mabhena, who sat wide-eyed in the audience, utterly flummoxed:
Horror Movies
During its “tribute” to horror films, the Academy essentially kneecapped the entire genre by inserting a laughably out-of-place clip from The Twilight Saga: New Moon — no doubt a concession made to secure the services of presenters Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart, a key component of ABC’s strategy to boost ratings among the crucial tween girl segment. New Moon is barely a movie, much less a horror movie.
Jason Reitman
Perhaps karma finally caught up with the Up in the Air director, who repeatedly tempted fate’s hand with public remarks in which he touted his own genius, denigrated junket journalists, and downplayed the contributions of his film’s credited co-writer, Sheldon Turner. Turner seemed to indicate as much when he enthusiastically rose to applaud as Precious writer Geoffrey Fletcher claimed the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay — pulling a major upset over the longtime favorite, Up in the Air.
The Major Studios
Hollywood’s corporate heavyweights were once again upended by their smaller, leaner brethren, laying claim to only 11 of the 24 awards handed out on Sunday.
Familiar Faces
First-time Oscar winners dominated the evening, making a clean sweep of the acting, screenwriting, Best Picture, and Best Director categories. In fact, the only previous winners to walk away with statuettes were Young Victoria costume designer Sandy Powell, who accepted her award with a sort of casual indifference, and Avatar visual effects artists Joe Letteri and Stephen Rosenbaum.
James Cameron
With all the potshots leveled at the Avatar director throughout the Oscar telecast, the 82nd Academy Awards might have been re-named the First Annual James Cameron Celebrity Roast. Everyone was scoring points off Cameron, from presenter Ben Stiller, who wore blue makeup and did an wry riff on Avatar’s alien dialect; to Best Foreign Film winner Juan Jose Campanella, who jokingly thanked the Academy for “not considering Na’vi a foreign language”; to ABC’s camera operators, who couldn’t resist zooming in on the famously hubristic Cameron’s nonplussed face after each successive indignity. For his part, Cameron found the victory podium as elusive as a handful of unobtanium.
Serving the night’s most delicious plate of schadenfreude, however, was Cameron’s ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, who completed The Hurt Locker‘s dominating performance by becoming the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar.
