Oscar battle between 'Avatar' and 'Hurt Locker'
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it would expand the best picture field for this year's Academy Awards, the decision could have been a disaster.
Based on Tuesday's nominations, disaster was mostly averted.
The obvious question with 10 best picture nominees is whether last year had ten good films. Finding five is easier — films like "Avatar," "The Hurt Locker" and "Inglorious Basterds" were obvious best pictures nominees. Ten is pushing it for a year whose cinematic achievements included dreck like "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," "Land of the Lost" and "All About Steve."
With 10 nominees, smaller films like "An Education" and "A Serious Man" get a boost in visibility. Both had a much smaller release than films like "Avatar" and "The Blind Side," so most audiences probably would have missed them. Not so with a best picture nod.
While the academy announced the nominations only on Tuesday, some awards are easy to pick already.
Jeff Bridges will likely win best actor for "Crazy Heart." Christoph Waltz will probably walk away with best supporting actor for "Basterds," though Christopher Plummer may win for "The Last Station" just to honor his entire career. Mo'Nique will continue her winning streak by taking best supporting actress for "Precious."
The real competition is between James Cameron and his former wife, Kathryn Bigelow. Bigelow recently won the Director's Guild Award for "The Hurt Locker," which is always a sign of who will take home best director.
What will probably happen is that "Avatar" will take best picture, while Bigelow will take best director — becoming the first woman to win the best directing award.
And just like with "Titanic" and "L.A. Confidential," "The Hurt Locker" will emerge as the better film over "Avatar" in the future, leading many film fans to wonder what the academy was thinking in 2010.
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Speaking of awards: It's time for Taylor Swift to disappear for a while.
On Sunday, she took home the Grammy for album of the year for her second album, "Fearless."
This comes after months of her winning virtually every award for which she was nominated, and from getting a big career boost when Kanye West interrupted her at the MTV Video Music Awards last fall.
I'm sick of her.
Over the past year, she's been everywhere. Everything she has released has been a big success, and she has the awards to prove it.
As a result, she's become massively overexposed, and at this point, burnout is easy.
Seeing her give the same "Who, me?" speech she always gives when accepting an award felt fake on Sunday. When you've won as many awards as she has, you would think she would be better at showing humility by now.
She's really not as good as her hype suggests, either. The more you hear "You Belong With Me" and her other songs, the more they sound like a 12-year-old's diary entries set to music.
Winning four Grammy awards aside, Sunday was kind of a disaster for Swift. Her performance with Stevie Nicks was an embarrassment — she cannot sing live. At all.
Watching her perform almost made one wish Kanye had interrupted her; not as many people would have been as angry with him as with the VMA interruption.
Since she did win, the backlash against her is growing (winning only added fuel to the fire). The longer she stays visible, the bigger it will get. Taking the rest of the year off is probably a good idea.
