'Avatar' vs. 'The Hurt Locker'?

Liz Smith

"DO NOT derive your art from art," said Jean Cocteau.

Oh, I don't know. If we didn't study whatever we consider to be art and then let it inspire us or encourage us to steal from and improve on it, aren't we ignoring cultural history and denying what inspiration means?

And Cocteau, the French artist, certainly did his share of inheriting attitudes and copying his betters. I mean his older peers, Marcel Proust, and also the Paris society arbiter, Robert de Montesquieu, upon whom Proust formulated his literary character, the Baron de Charlus. (He is the snob who said: "Every party must be given against someone!")

SO LET'S consider the Academy Awards.

People keep asking me to handicap it all, but I have no expertise. I am personally afraid that "Avatar," which has made so much splashy money, will win in what may well be a box office bonanza vote.

But James Cameron's science fiction 3-D work, which has astonished so many, is certainly not "the best" picture. (And I, for one, doubt that it is going to change moviemaking and movie-going all that much. There'll be other 3-D spectacles now that filmmakers realize there is so much money in them. But I doubt that this is the revolution Hollywood is making it out to be. Sorry, but it certainly isn't on a par with the invention of sound!)

I didn't dislike "Avatar."

I thought it was interesting as it applied futuristic tactics to the old idea of how ruthless militarists have ruined and wrenched property away from "the natives" since time immemorial. We've seen this movie idea over and over again. It is an overview of the making of the U.S.A. from our revolutionary beginnings through Andrew Jackson's wars and the U.S. 7th cavalry riding "to the rescue" and slaughtering Native Americans -- all too familiar.

Was "Avatar" just ravishing to look at?

Well, I didn't think so and I found Cameron's blue people quite weird ... almost as weird as the repulsive aliens in another, I'm sorry to say, neglected sci-fi film "District 9." This is the story of South Africans practicing a continuing apartheid on creatures from another planet. But "District 9" is a much superior story and movie for 2009. In the end you like and root for the aliens of "District 9" and that just didn't happen to me with the blue males and females of "Avatar."

So, I am hoping a woman director, Kathryn Bigelow, will make history by winning 'best picture" with "The Hurt Locker." Not to mock her ex-husband, the effusive and self-regarding Mr. Cameron, but because her movie is the best. (No woman director's movie has ever won "best" picture but four have been nominated -- Lina Wertmuller for "Seven Beauties" in 1976, Jane Campion for "The Piano" in 1993, Sofia Coppola for "Lost in Translation" in 2003 and now Kathryn Bigelow.)

It may be a "trend" that Ms. Bigelow has already won the coveted "best director" award from the directors themselves, the Director's Guild, as well as "best director" awards from Austin, Boston, Kansas City, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Gotham and other film organizations. (I probably forgot many of these.)

So I feel this is Kathryn's moment! Just as I hope that, as much as I like the adorable Sandra Bullock, the Academy voters won't turn things into a popularity contest and give her the best acting award -- not in a year when she is competing with Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren. Sandra's acting is simply nowhere near that of these miracle women.

RE "The Hurt Locker" possibly winning: isn't it also time that we acknowledge once again that war is the world's business and particularly, it has been America's business. So, perhaps we should be paying much more attention to the results of war and its perils and aftermath as seen in "The Hurt Locker."

WHEN I say that war is America's business, I am thinking of Dwight D. Eisenhower warning us that we might be taken over by the military industrial complex and we surely have been, despite his warning.

Beginning in 1775 we have been involved in The Revolution, the War of 1812, the Indian Wars, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Desert Shield/Desert Storm, the Iraq War and now we are in Afghanistan and involved in an ongoing war against terror.

So we might as well start giving war movies more consideration. And this year, "The Hurt Locker" is an astounding feat and a mind-blowing experience.

 

Will Oscar Lose Its 'Crazy Heart' for Jeff Bridges

Jeff Bridges is vying against George Clooney (Up in the Air), Colin Firth (A Single Man), Morgan Freeman (Invictus) and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker). To the millions who tune in to the Oscars on March 7, these terrific performances. Every one deserves an award. But this is Jeff Bridge's year. The same goes for Sandra Bullock. Here's why

Oscarcast Challenged By More Nominations

Widening the Academy Awards field to 10 contenders for 2009 was hailed and criticized on various fronts, with some seeing the expanded roster as a crass, grade-inflating attempt to provide more populist appeal -- thus boosting the audience's rooting interest and, presumably, the kudocast's ratings.

 

© Variety. Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

 

 

ENTERTAINMENT

BOOKS | TELEVISION | MUSIC | THE ARTS | MOVIES | CULTURE

 

 

 

82nd Academy Awards Oscar Nominations: Will Oscar Lose Its 'Crazy Heart' for Jeff Bridges