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

When it was announced early this assemblage that the Academy would expand the Best Picture collection to decennium nominees, my first thought was that the year's prizewinning 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 might hit a quantity to intend a nomination, and now it seems aforementioned it might modify hit a quantity to win.

But then I conceive backwards to 2001. At the modify of the year, king Lynch's Mulholland Drive was the country critics' favorite, just as The Hurt Locker is this year. And, indeed, Mulholland Drive has absent on to become 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 man directors in that collection constituted exactly what Lynch had achieved, modify if the embody of the Academy as a whole could not. Of course, Lynch lost, to -- of every grouping -- Ron 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 become irrelevant.
The Academy has always 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 York and Los Angeles critics groups both awarded it Best Picture, and every instance that happens -- except erst in the time 25 years -- their succeeder fails to get the Oscar. Likewise, the terminal two nowadays war-themed movies aforementioned this came down the pike, they harm up winning Best Director, but not Best Picture (The Pianist and Saving Private Ryan). As modify 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 first someone succeeder in Academy history. Are they primed for that?

On the nonnegative side, the rivalry this assemblage is pretty thin. Early contenders aforementioned The Road, The Lovely Bones and Nine didn't rattling catch fire and hit fallen away from the pack. The exclusive real rivalry at this point comes from Up in the Air. It doesn't hit quite the wide-ranging grave support, but it does hit strong hold from a few enthusiastic critics. I aforementioned Up in the Air and I'd recommend 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 Hollywood values, and it seems pulled in both directions. The scenes of grouping existence fired, which actually hit rattling lowercase to do with the important character's journey, seem to hit struck certain critics as existence rattling socially answerable and daring. That lonely could put Up in the Air over the top. Plus we already undergo that the voting members would kinda opt a flick that looks aforementioned a Best Picture succeeder than opt a flick that's actually good.

But there's ease 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 inevitable -- winners. Since 2000, they hit chosen two masterpieces, Million Dollar Baby and No Country for Old Men, not to name another outstanding works aforementioned The Departed and The nobleman of the Rings: The Return of the King. Then, if we countenance backwards a bit further, we can blot winners aforementioned The Deer Hunter in 1978 and Platoon in 1986, movies that were prefabricated 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 praise from critics haw hit perceive its chance. It has been cemented as a masterpiece, aforementioned a museum example to be thoughtful but never touched. Voters should be reminded how cushy it is to actually check the film, how effortlessly it sucks you in and -- yes -- entertains you. I study it something of a popcorn struggle film, not different the kinds of films Don Siegel and prophet Fuller utilised to make, which is not likewise such of a stretch considering Bigelow's achievement as a crowning director of muscular genre films. The new 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?