The Four Most Important Awards at the Oscars

-The Hurt Locker got Best Picture
-Kathryn Bigelow got Best Director
-Jeff Bridges got Best Actor
and
-SANDRA BULLOCK??! got Best Actress.

I am soooo glad Avatar did not win Best Picture, and that James Cameron did not win Best Director. Avatar was a gripping adventure flick but ultimately it was a mess. It was as patronizing as could be, with a blatant political message and ugly stereotypes (such as Mighty Whitey or "White Messiah" complex. Seriously. They dump him into an alien body and he becomes the tribe's best warrior, over people who have spent their lives living that way? I'm calling bull), bad dialogue, and a script that easily could've have been trimmed, but wasn't because the Director had way too much control, as well as pretty much borrowing specific points of the plotlines from every film ever made, even James Cameron's old films. You can blame this stuff all on James Cameron, too, because he had the primary writing credit. He wrote his own film, then he had it made, then he directed it, and while it is visually an intense moviegoing experience, if you saw it without 3D, I imagine you were treated to 2+ hours of the Hi-Def dreck that I saw.

To some extent, I do feel like Kathryn Bigelow's award was contingent on Best Picture. The Academy could not have given her the award, but then delivered Best Picture to some other film without somebody noting (as many suggested would happen, including the NYTimes' Carpetbagger) that it would've been convienent for the Academy to make history with the first woman director to win, and then give the Best Picture Oscar to something else, (specifically Avatar) to appease the masses who haven't seen The Hurt Locker. Which is not to say The Hurt Locker didn't deserve a win. Au contaire, it was the best of the films nominated (that I've seen, which is everything but Precious, A Serious Man, An Education, and The Blind Side). I couldn't really say if there was a better film that wasn't nominated, but that's my feeling. It didn't quite move me in the way that other films have (Hunger, for example, which passed unnoticed at the Oscars last year). Moon could've been a nice choice.

Jeff Bridges won best Actor, something he easily should've won five times over by now. Luckily, the Dude Abides.

And now the real gist of this post: Sandra Bullock. To win her Oscar, Sandra played a tenacious football mom, in a movie that was supposed to be a story about Michael Ohler, but instead became a movie about Sandra Bullock's character. Which wasn't written for her. They wrote it for Julia Roberts, who had the good sense to duck it. Maybe if Julia hadn't, they would've given the Award to someone else, seeing as they already gave her an Oscar for the exact same character in Erin Brockovich. Here's who the Oscars had to snub in order to give Bullock the award:

• Hellen Mirren as Leo Tolstoy's long-suffering wife.
• Carey Mulligan as Girl Coming of Age
• Gabourey Sidibe as Girl Going Through Incredibly Traumatic Exeperiences (including rape) - based on real life
• Meryl Streep as Julia Child

So, they gave the award to Sandra Bullock as Tenacious Football Mom who Decides to Do a Good Thing, and Then Feels Good About It. Any one of the other four women there had a tougher role than Sandra Bullock. She played a more difficult and nuanced character in Speed, for Pete's sake.

Here's what I think happened: They had a nominee pool of two previous winners, two complete newcomers, and Sandra Bullock. Rather than being ballsy and saying "Hey, you know, one of you new girls turned in an Oscar-worthy performance right off the bat, welcome to Hollywood" or going "Meryl, you're incredible (as always), here's your award" they said "Hey, Sandra, you talked with a Texan accent this time around, and you clearly can't suffer from the Oscar curse, (seeing how your career is already cursed, seriously, Miss Congeniality 2?), so here's your statue. Cheers."

So, how would I characterize this Oscars? Gutless. Good work on the sexism bit, it was nice after 81 years of men winning (80 years of white men, winning) you finally noticed that women have been directing films since at least the 1930s and kicked one over to them. Maybe next year, you can work on your racism. Giving Mo'Nique a Best Supporting Actress award isn't enough. Sorry.