Kathryn Bigelow and ‘The Hurt Locker’ make Oscar history

Kathryn Bigelow made history Sunday night at the 82d
Annual Academy Awards, becoming the first woman to win best director,
for “The Hurt Locker,” which captured six awards, including best
picture.

The tense film about thrill junkies who defuse bombs
in Iraq won
original screenplay, sound editing, sound mixing and editing.

“This really is — there’s no other way to describe it
— the moment of a lifetime,” said Bigelow, 58, who dedicated her award
to “the women and men in the military who risk their lives on a daily
basis. … May they come home safe.”

Bigelow, whose movie barely recouped its $15
million budget, bested her ex-husband, James Cameron.
His “Avatar,” which won three Oscars including cinematography, is the
highest-grossing movie ever, with $2.5 billion in global
revenue.

Hollywood
veterans Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock won their first Oscars. Bridges, a second-generation performer, won
best actor for his role as Bad Blake, a boozy country music has-been, in
“Crazy Heart.”

“Thank you, Mom and Dad, for turning me on to such a
groovy profession,” said the 60-year-old actor, whose first nomination
was in 1971. “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart),” a ballad from
the film, won original song.

Bullock, the Miss Congeniality of comic actors,
proved that she was equally adept at drama as Leigh Anne Tuohy,
the real-life adoptive mother of NFL star Michael Oher in “The Blind Side.”

“Did I really earn this, or did I just wear you all
down?” joked Bullock, 45, accepting her award. On Saturday she won a Golden
Raspberry as worst actress for “All About Steve,” making her
the first performer to win an Oscar and Razzie in the same weekend.

The comedian Mo’Nique won the supporting-actress
Oscar for her shattering performance as the abusive mother in “Precious:
Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.” She thanked the Academy for
showing “it can be about the performance and not the politics.”

Mo’Nique, 42, also cited Hattie McDaniel,
the first African American to win an Oscar (“Gone with the Wind”), “for
enduring all that she had to, so that I would not have to.” “Precious”
screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher won for best adapted
screenplay.

Christoph Waltz, 53, captured supporting-actor honors
for his role as the nefarious Nazi in “Inglourious Basterds.”

“Up,” Pixar’s soaring animation about a retiree who
pursues a long-deferred adventure, took two Oscars, one for best
animated feature, the other for Michael Giacchino’s sprightly score.

The wins by “The Hurt Locker” and “Precious” marked
another year in which indies triumphed over studio blockbusters.

Given the 10 nominees for top movie and a new voting
system for best picture, there was no clear front-runner as Hollywood prepared
to celebrate the movies of 2009, a robust year at the box office.

Not since 1943, when “Casablanca” was named best
picture, had there been 10 contenders in the top race. An added wrinkle
was the new “preferential voting” system for best picture, which
guaranteed that the winner received not the most votes, but a majority
of them.

As the nominees and presenters filed into to Kodak
Theatre, across the street from the Hollywood Roosevelt where the
Academy Awards were first held in 1928, the dominant color of the gowns
was an azure hue that might be called Na’vi blue (after the color of
the tribespeople in “Avatar”). Both Zoe Saldana, who
played the Na’vi Pocahontas in “Avatar,” and Cameron’s wife, Suzy
Amis, wore dresses in that shade. Likewise Mo’Nique and
Gabourey Sidibe, who played the mother and the title character in
“Precious.”

“Star Trek,” J.J. Abrams’ reboot of
the beloved franchise, was presented the award for best makeup by Ben
Stiller, outfitted as a Na’vi, with blue skin and frisky tail.

Sunday night’s show opened with the 10 lead-actor
and actress nominees on stage, followed by a musical number from Neil
Patrick Harris introducing the evening’s emcees as “the
biggest pair since Dolly Parton.”

Co-hosts Steve Martin and Alec
Baldwin (co-stars of “It’s Complicated”) began the show with
cheeky patter modeled on the naughtiness of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Tweaking George Clooney and celebrating their “It’s Complicated” co-star Meryl Streep,
Martin and Baldwin were intermittently funny but often fogey-ish. In
its first hour, the show front-loaded young talent (Amanda
Seyfried and Miley Cyrus) and popular
categories such as animation.

The late John Hughes, subject of a
posthumous tribute from his discoveries Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick, received the evening’s first
standing ovation.

Argentina’s “El
Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret of Your Eyes),” a murder mystery, was
the surprise winner for foreign film, edging out Michael
Haneke’s “The White Ribbon,” widely considered the favorite.

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