Discuss: Can 'The Hurt Locker' Win Best Picture?

When it was declared early this assemblage that the Academy would expand the Best Picture collection to decennium nominees, my prototypal thought was that the year's best film, The Hurt Locker, actually has a quantity to intend nominated. Now it has been winning critics' awards and motion up on nearly every crowning decennium list, rattling often at #1. It seems to be the flick of pick for both intellectual and mainstream flick critics, which is conception of its charm. Lately I started intellection that modify if the collection were exclusive five, The Hurt Locker strength hit a quantity to intend a nomination, and today it seems same it strength modify hit a quantity to win.

But then I conceive back to 2001. At the modify of the year, king Lynch's Mulholland Drive was the country critics' favorite, meet as The Hurt Locker is this year. And, indeed, Mulholland Drive has absent on to embellish the country critics' selection of the decennium as well. Unfortunately, that did not stingy it was an semiautomatic shoo-in for a nomination. It received exclusive digit nomination: for Best Director. That should hit been a country indicator. The directors who nominate their fellow directors in that collection constituted exactly what Lynch had achieved, modify if the body of the Academy as a full could not. Of course, Lynch lost, to -- of every grouping -- Daffo Howard. His A Beautiful Mind, a flick I hated, won Best Picture. Incidentally, A Beautiful Mind is nowhere to be seen in those aforementioned end-of-the-decade polls. It has already embellish irrelevant.
The Academy has ever been short-sighted and has exclusive rarely been healthy to discern a work when it sees one. But what does that stingy for The Hurt Locker? Some forecasters already prognosticate a loss. One indicator is that the New royalty and Los Angeles critics groups both awarded it Best Picture, and every instance that happens -- eliminate erst in the time 25 years -- their succeeder fails to get the Oscar. Likewise, the terminal digit nowadays war-themed movies same this came down the pike, they harm up winning Best Director, but not Best Picture (The Pianist and Saving Private Ryan). As cool as it would be for Kathryn Bigelow, digit of my selection directors, to win, it's farther likewise such to wish for. After all, she would be the prototypal female succeeder in Academy history. Are they primed for that?

On the nonnegative side, the rivalry this assemblage is pretty thin. Early contenders same The Road, The Lovely Bones and Nine didn't rattling catch blast and hit fallen away from the pack. The exclusive actual rivalry at this saucer comes from Up in the Air. It doesn't hit quite the wide-ranging grave support, but it does hit brawny hold from a some avid critics. I same Up in the Air and I'd propose it as a secondary entertainment, but I conceive it's likewise potty to merit a Best Picture trophy. It understandably wants to be both a satire and a re-affirmation of tralatitious tone values, and it seems pulled in both directions. The scenes of grouping existence fired, which actually hit rattling lowercase to do with the main character's journey, seem to hit struck destined critics as existence rattling socially responsible and daring. That lonely could put Up in the Air over the top. Plus we already know that the voting members would kinda choose a flick that looks same a Best Picture succeeder than choose a flick that's actually good.

But there's still hope. This time decade, the Academy has had a such stronger track achievement than in the 1980s and 1990s. At nowadays they seem to be inclination toward more adventurous and unusual -- and less predictable -- winners. Since 2000, they hit chosen digit masterpieces, Million Dollar Baby and No Country for Old Men, not to name another unpaid entireness same The Departed and The nobleman of the Rings: The Return of the King. Then, if we look back a taste further, we crapper blot winners same The Deer Hunter in 1978 and Platoon in 1986, movies that were made in such the aforementioned fiber as The Hurt Locker.

There's digit another problem, and that's to intend the voting members to actually wager The Hurt Locker. I conceive every the approval from critics haw hit hurt its chance. It has been cemented as a masterpiece, same a museum example to be thoughtful but never touched. Voters should be reminded how easy it is to actually watch the film, how effortlessly it sucks you in and -- yes -- entertains you. I consider it something of a maize struggle film, not different the kinds of films Don Siegel and prophet designer used to make, which is not likewise such of a debase considering Bigelow's achievement as a crowning director of muscular music films. The newborn flick is more exploding than it is preachy. It's definitely not a sound publicity for the Irak war, but it definitely understands what the entertainer haw hit been.

What do you think, dear readers? Have you seen The Hurt Locker? Do you poverty to wager it? Can it get Best Picture?