The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow battled her way into Oscar history books on Sunday, topping her movie’s best film honor with her own Academy Award for directing to become the first woman ever to earn that distinction.
The low-budget film, which has earned US$20 million at box offices, picked up six awards in all and bested Avatar, directed by Bigelow’s ex-husband James Cameron. Avatar is the top-grossing movie of all time with US$2.5 billion.
In a ceremony that harkened back to old Hollywood with glamour, music and comedy, the gritty drama about a squad of bomb-defusing specialists also secured writer Mark Boal the Academy Award for original screenplay and claimed honors for film editing, sound editing and mixing.
“This really is, there’s no other way to describe it, it’s the moment of a lifetime,” said Bigelow. Backstage, she told reporters that she hoped she was only the first of many women directors to win an Oscar.
Boal highlighted the struggle to make the movie when only a few years ago in Hollywood money for such true-life drama was hard to find after audiences turned their backs on war films.
“This has been a dream, beyond a dream,” said Boal, a journalist who was embedded with US troops in Iraq.
At best, he said, the film’s makers hoped “we would find a distributor and someone would like the movie.”
Avatar walked away with three Oscars, but in technical categories — visual effects, cinematography and art direction.
FAMILY NIGHT
Veteran Jeff Bridges claimed best actor for playing a drunken country singer in drama Crazy Heart. The son of Hollywood star Lloyd Bridges held his trophy high over his head, looking to the heavens and thanking his deceased parents.
“Mom and Dad, yeah,” he shouted. “Thank you Mom and Dad for turning me on to such a groovy profession.”
Sandra Bullock was named best actress for The Blind Side in a first for the actress once dubbed “America’s Sweetheart” because she won so many early fans in her romantic comedies.
For The Blind Side, however, she took the part of a real-life, strong-willed mother who helps take a homeless youth off the street and makes him into a football success.
“Did I really earn this, or did I just wear you all down?” she joked on the Oscars stage.
She held back tears when thanking her own mother, whom she called “a trailblazer” and major influence in her own life.
“To the moms who take care of the babies, no matter where they come from. Those moms never get thanked,” Bullock said.
Family film Up, one of the best-reviewed movies of 2009, won two Oscars for best animated movie and original score with its tale of an elderly man who ties balloons to his home and flies off on an adventure with a young boy.
Dark drama Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire also earned two Oscars including best supporting actress for Mo’Nique and, in another piece of Academy Award history, adapted screenplay for writer Geoffrey Fletcher, who became the first African American to claim that honor.
LOOKING BACK
Mo’Nique told reporters backstage that in her hair she wore the same gardenia Hattie McDaniel had when she won supporting actress in Gone With the Wind — a trailblazing win because it was the first ever Oscar for an African American.
“I want to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring all she had to so that I would not have to,” Mo’Nique said on stage.
Austrian actor Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor for his turn as a menacing Nazi officer in revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds, which follows a band of American Jews killing their enemies behind lines during World War II.
But it was the only trophy Quentin Tarantino’s Basterds could claim after being the second-most nominated movie with eight nods to nine apiece for Hurt Locker and Avatar.
Oscar organizers promised a fast-paced show with lots of laughs from co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. And after an old-style musical from Neil Patrick Harris with showgirls and men in tuxedos and tails, Baldwin and Martin put on a stand-up routine picking out stars in the audience.
“There’s that damn Helen Mirren,” Martin said.
“No Steve, that’s Dame Helen Mirren,” Baldwin came back.
Late last month Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro told the Philippine Senate that the nation has sufficient funds to evacuate the nearly 170,000 Filipino residents in Taiwan, 84 percent of whom are migrant workers, in the event of war. Agencies have been exploring evacuation scenarios since early this year, she said. She also observed that since the Philippines has only limited ships, the government is consulting security agencies for alternatives. Filipinos are a distant third in overall migrant worker population. Indonesia has over 248,000 workers, followed by roughly 240,000 Vietnamese. It should be noted that there are another 170,000
Enter the Dragon 13 will bring Taiwan’s first taste of Dirty Boxing Sunday at Taipei Gymnasium, one highlight of a mixed-rules card blending new formats with traditional MMA. The undercard starts at 10:30am, with the main card beginning at 4pm. Tickets are NT$1,200. Dirty Boxing is a US-born ruleset popularized by fighters Mike Perry and Jon Jones as an alternative to boxing. The format has gained traction overseas, with its inaugural championship streamed free to millions on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Taiwan’s version allows punches and elbows with clinch striking, but bans kicks, knees and takedowns. The rules are stricter than the
“Far from being a rock or island … it turns out that the best metaphor to describe the human body is ‘sponge.’ We’re permeable,” write Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie in their book Slow Death By Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things. While the permeability of our cells is key to being alive, it also means we absorb more potentially harmful substances than we realize. Studies have found a number of chemical residues in human breast milk, urine and water systems. Many of them are endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with the body’s natural hormones. “They can mimic, block
Pratas Island, or Dongsha (東沙群島) had lain off the southern coast of China for thousands of years with no one claiming it until 1908, when a Japanese merchant set up a facility there to harvest guano. The Americans, then overlords of the Philippines, disturbed to learn of Japanese expansion so close to their colony, alerted the Manchu (Qing) government. That same year the British government asked the Manchus who owned the island, which prompted the Manchu government to make a claim, according to South China Sea expert Bill Hayton. In 1909 the government of Guangdong finally got around to sending
RSS