THE 2010 OSCARS

I usually don’t watch the Academy Awards on TV but I tuned in tonight for final two awards. Those awards were “Best Director” and “Best Picture”. The reason I decided to see who won those awards was because I wanted to be sure that James Cameron didn’t win either.

Yeah, it’s a pretty crappy thing to do, not wanting someone to win something but let me explain. There is no doubt Cameron is a truly talented and visionary director. I will always be in his debt for bringing to the world Terminator 2 and Aliens, both of which are among my favourite movies. Unfortunately, Cameron acts like such a dumbass sometimes. When he accepted the “Best Director” award for Titanic, he proclaimed himself “king of the world”. Dude, for starters, don’t try to shoehorn specific lines from your movie into your acceptance speech. Also, don’t proclaim yourself better than everyone, because everyone already understands that. You just got the damn “Best Director” award, we get it, you’re the best director for that year. Last but certainly not least, proclaiming yourself the king of world because you made a movie about hundreds of people losing their lives tragically is a douchebag way of going about things.

Ok, so maybe that was a long time ago and perhaps we can forgive Cameron for that. Whoops. Cameron just had to spice up his acceptance speech at the 2010 Golden Globes with a quote using his made up Navi language from his movie Avatar. That was dumb. It just makes him seems self-absorbed with his own creations. Things like that prevent people from taking fantasy and sci-fi films seriously. Consider this. How many times did Peter Jackson drop some Elvish lines the multiple times he went on stage for the Lord of the Rings trilogy? That’s right, none. Is it coincidence that The Return of the King won “Best Picture”?

In the end tonight, Kathryn Bigelow and her movie, The Hurt Locker won “Best Director” and “Best Picture” respectively. This made me quite pleased. To be clear, I haven’t seen either Locker nor Avatar but the fact that we didn’t have to hear Cameron yammering on stage was good enough for me. Plus, she beat out her ex-husband at the very thing that he is so passionate about. Ha!

To be fair, I think Bigelow is a very talented director and her win tonight stands on her own, with or without the Cameron subtext. One last thing, if anyone can figure out how, at the age of 58, she manages to look like she’s still in her late 30s, please let me know.