"The Hurt Locker" won the award for best original screenplay at 82nd annual Academy Awards show Sunday.
"The Hurt Locker" Writer Mark Boal, who based the script on his reporting from Iraq, paid tribute to director Kathryn Bigelow, "all of the soldiers still over there and those who have died" and to his father, who passed away a month ago, he said in his acceptance speech.
Christoph Waltz won the first Oscar of the night, a best supporting actor award for "Inglourious Basterds."
There are other skirmishes going on, of course, though they're of the more mundane Hollywood variety. One of the sharpest competitions is between best actress nominees Meryl Streep ("Julie & Julia") and Sandra Bullock ("The Blind Side").
For Bullock, tonight could bookend a weekend of extremes. Saturday night, the actress picked up a worst actress Razzie award -- in person.
"I think that this is an extraordinary award, and I didn't realize that in Hollywood that all you had to do was say you'll show up and then you'd get it," she said in her Razzie acceptance speech. "If I had known that, I would have said I was appearing at the Oscars a long time ago."
Best supporting actress favorite Mo'Nique walked the red carpet with a white gardenia in her hair, a tribute to Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actress to win an Academy Award.
McDaniel wore a gardenia when she accepted her best supporting actress Oscar for her role as Mammy in "Gone With the Wind" 70 years ago, Mo'Nique said.
"It's long overdue that the world find out how dynamic this woman was," she said. "She changed the way people thought, so that needs to be honored and seen."
History could be made at Sunday's awards. Kathryn Bigelow, who directed "The Hurt Locker," is only the fourth woman to be nominated for best director. If she wins the award -- and she's considered the favorite, having won the bellwether Director's Guild honor several weeks ago -- she'll be the first woman to do so.
A win for Bigelow could also be taken personally by one of her competitors, "Avatar" director James Cameron. The two were once husband and wife. (The parting was said to be amicable, and Cameron -- who won best director for "Titanic" a dozen years ago -- has frequently come out as one of his ex-wife's biggest supporters.)
The movie business is counting on these and other storylines to drive ratings.
The Academy Awards hit their audience peak in 1998, when "Titanic," then the biggest box-office hit in history, took the big prize. Ratings have declined in recent years, though last year, when "Slumdog Millionaire" won, saw an uptick.
"I always wanted to discover some new continent, and I thought had to go this way. ... And [director] Quentin [Tarantino], with his unorthodox methods of navigation, took this ship and brought it in with flying colors," he said, paying ornate tribute to director Quentin Tarantino and much of the film's cast and crew.
"This is your welcoming embrace, and there's no way I can ever thank you enough," Waltz continued. "But I can start right now, thank you."
Tarantino said he would not have made the movie unless he had discovered Waltz.
"If I hadn't found the right Landa, I wouldn't have made the movie," Tarantino said before the ceremony. "I couldn't find anyone to pull it off, and then this man 'Waltzed' into my room."
In a moving tribute, several stars of John Hughes movies -- including Molly Ringwald, Matthew Broderick, Jon Cryer, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall and Macaulay Culkin -- came out to talk about the director of "The Breakfast Club" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," who died in 2009. Hughes' family, which was sitting in the audience, received an ovation.
"Up" won best animated feature, yet another victory for the Pixar studios, which has dominated the category since its introduction for the 2002 awards. Pixar has now won three straight animated feature Oscars and five of the nine overall.
"The Weary Kind," from "Crazy Heart," won best original song.
The ceremony began with an over-the-top musical number, with Neil Patrick Harris singing surrounded by dancers and Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin being lowered from the ceiling.
Settling in for a humorous dialogue, Martin and Baldwin, going for a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby rhythm, cracked jokes about most of the nominees, with Baldwin getting into a staring contest with George Clooney and Martin remarking that "Precious," a grim tale of an inner-city teenager, was "better than its video game."
As always, the Oscars present a number of storylines -- many of which are featured in the race for best picture between "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker," including a David-Goliath scenario between the small-budget "Locker," about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, and the blockbuster "Avatar," a science fiction film about humans and aliens set more than a century in the future.
(Ben Stiller, dressed as one of "Avatar's" Na'vi right down to the tail, came out to present best makeup -- an award, he noted, "Avatar" wasn't even up for. The award was won by "Star Trek.")
The two films are nominated for nine Oscars each to lead all comers. In a new wrinkle -- one that was last seen in the early '40s -- 10 films are up for best picture.
Source : CNN
