Oscar winners 2010 - The Hurt Locker upsets Avatar

The 2010 Academy Awards is history and of the Oscar winners for 2010 the talk is how the The Hurt Locker upset Avatar. And at the Night of 100 Stars Party at The Beverly Hills Hotel, the conversation was thick with why Avatar lost to The Hurt Locker. (It wasn't an upset here. This blogger missed correctly predicting six of the total number of Oscar winner categories, and missed none of the major Oscar awards.)

First some housecleaning: congratulations to Katheryn Bigelow on becoming the first female director to win an Oscar for Best Director for The Hurt Locker, which then went on to win Best Picture. It really is about time.

Second, this issue in brief as they're taking down the light stands and breaking down the media room around this blogger after the Night of 100 Stars Party. The bottom line is that it's easier to make a movie with great special effects more so than it is a timely film with a good story. The Best Picture is the film that's a story that causes one to think about the World around them. The Hurt Locker, in so many ways, was that movie.

Ok. I've got to jam out of here. More videos and blog posts coming from a great Oscar Sunday!

Sean Young on The Hurt Locker and being a woman in Hollywood

Sean Young is not a fan of The Hurt Locker for Oscar's Best Picture award: "I don't like movies that glorify war," she said. Sean Young was a guest at The Night of 100 Stars Oscar Viewing Party, and an amazingly engaging person.

Ms. Young's not shy with her views and is wonderfully refreshing. Aside from the fact that Kathryn Bigelow directed The Hurt Locker, and "she's doing well, Young said, "I'm very opposed to this war in Iraq and have been from the start." So much so that even if some in the military hate The Hurt Locker, she says the fact that the main character goes back to the war after all of his experiences essentially makes war something tolerable.

Interesting.

For someone who told EW.com she "didn't like doing interviews", Sean Young seemed to be enjoying herself. She talked openly about something this blogger did not want to bring up: her being "blacklisted."

Sean Young said she was as a very matter of fact answer to my question "What's your next project." Sean Young said "No, I got drunk at the DGA a couple of years ago. You know they say to Downey, Jr. and Kiefer Sutherland, 'Hey. Go to prison. Come back. You'll be ok. It's a man's business and they're not real kind to women."

Sean Young has a YouTube channel msyPARIAH that I encouraged her to make into a YouTube Partner video channel as a way to launch her comeback in film and media. She thinks it's a good idea.

Stay tuned.

Oscars 2010: Oscar Red Carpet, Sunday morning (video)

This Oscars 2010: Oscar Red Carpet, Sunday morning blog post is being written as this blogger's taking a much needed break from covering The Night of 100 Stars Party at The Beverly Hills Hotel. What's so frustrating and yet fun about this star-studed event is that, even though many of the celebrities are what are called "B" listers, they are a hell of a lot of fun to talk to and to be with. So much so that I've missed the first 35 minutes of The Oscars!

Of all the names, David Leisure, James Cromwell, Sean Young, Stephanie Powers, Stephen Collins, and Jason Ritter, among them, all great people, Ms. Young was the most fun to talk with. Sean Young has been characterized in the media in ways that are not kind. The person I met is amazingly bright, very engaging and a lot of fun. She's open and brutally honest, which I can see may set some people a bit off, but it's endearing.

Earlier in the morning I visited The Red Carpet during the media setup period. While stars had not come through at that time before 11 AM, the place, as you can see in the video, was abuzz with the life of people. From the people in the bleachers to the media representatives on The Red Carpet it was the place to be. Yours truly found the perfect role for his outsized personality: revving up the people in the Kodak-sponsored bleachers area. (That's Tina from Kodak in the video thumbnail photo.)

My visit became a YouTube Partner roundup, as Jamal from Blacktree Media and his team, Cerk from The Young Turks, and me as Zennie62 got together in the middle of The Red Carpet, the future of media.

This future of media had to leave at 11 AM. I got a limousine and headed over to The Beverly Hills Hotel for The Night of 100 Starts event. That's where I am now, happy for Geoffrey Fletcher's win of the Bsst Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Precious.

Stay tuned.

The Oscars 2010 Date and Time, 5 PM PST; 8 PM EST; not in New York

Beverly Hills, CA - Today's Oscar Sunday! The 82nd Annual Academy Awards, or "The Oscars" will start at 3 PM PST and 6 PM EST for coverage of The Red Carpet and 5 PM PST and 8 PM EST for the Oscars.

It's all on ABC Television except for those poor people in the New York City area, you're caught in the middle of the feud between ABC and Cablevision and may not be able to see The Oscars.

The ABC v. Cablevision issue is over monthly customer fees. Reportedly, according to the Wall Street Journal, Disney wanted to charge $1 per subscriber per month, but Disney says it is half that request.

Whatever the case, much of New York will miss the Oscars. But you can catch it online. ABC will have a live show from The Red Carpet here: ABC Live. Also, search around carefully, because some pages that read they have an "Oscars live stream" really don't have it.

Betty Nguyen leaving CNN for CBS News

Beverly Hills, CA - As we get ready for The Oscars (time at 5 PM PST, 8 PM EST), there's a news that popular and beautiful CNN anchor Betty Nguyen is leaving CNN for CBS News according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Betty Nguyen did confirm that Oscar Sunday will be her last day with CNN on her Twitter page:

Aww. Last morning on the show. I'm really going to miss CNN. My friends & colleagues here are truly top notch.
about 5 hours ago via web

Nguyen finished her last week at CNN with an inteview with His Holiness, The Dalai Lama. While Nguyen's leaving for CNN for CBS, the AJC reports Anderson Cooper's staying put.

Stay tuned for more intense Oscar Coverage from Hollywood and Highland and Beverly Hills.  Check Zennie62.com for Twitter updates.

The Oscars predictions - Avatar loses Best Picture to The Hurt Locker

Also: The Oscars, The Hurt Locker, Best Picture, Kathryn Bigelow, 2010 Oscars Predictions, 82nd annual Academy Awards, Avatar director James Cameron

Beverly Hills, CA - The general habit here is to wait until the last possible minute until predictions for The Oscars are made. That's to give this blogger enough time to research how politics has impacted the Oscars race.

The question is annually asked "Did you see every movie?" which has nothing to do with predicting which movie will win what award at The Oscars. Getting one's Oscar predictions correct means taking one's heart out of it, and just using their head. What you have to do is guess how the Academy's going to pick and why.

The Hurt Locker is a dramatically powerful film. So much so that an arguably questionable decision to ban Nicolas Chartier, one of the fllm's producers, from the Oscars on Sunday for an email he wrote to friends in the Academy asking them to vote for his picture, will not hurt its momentum.

The reason is the overwhelming desire to give the Best Director Award to The Hurt Locker's brilliant director Kathryn Bigelow, and make her the first woman in history to win an Oscar for Best Director. The momentum to make this happen is enormous, so much so that I'm going out on a limb and say there's no contest. And The Academy tends to believe that a film can't have the best director and not be the best picture. This powerful desire will override the new-for-2010 preference voting system and give The Hurt Locker the prize.

 Now, with that information in place and compared with "precursor" awards, here's Zennie62's Oscar Predictions for 2010:

Performance by an actor in a leading role: Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart
Performance by an actor in a supporting role: Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds
Performance by an actress in a leading role: Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side
Performance by an actress in a supporting role: Mo'Nique in Precious
Best animated feature film of the year: Disney / Pixar's UP
Achievement in art direction: Avatar
Achievement in cinematography: Avatar
Achievement in costume design: Coco before Chanel
Achievement in directing: The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow
Best documentary feature: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Best documentary short subject: The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Achievement in film editing: Avatar
Best foreign language film of the year: The White Ribbon
Achievement in makeup: Star Trek
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score): Up
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song): "Down in New Orleans" from The Princess and the Frog, Randy Newman
Best motion picture of the year: The Hurt Locker
Best animated short film: A Matter of Loaf and Death (Nick Park of Aardman)
Best live action short film: The New Tenants
Achievement in sound editing: Star Trek
Achievement in sound mixing: Star Trek
Achievement in visual effects: Avatar
Adapted screenplay: Up in the Air
Original screenplay: The Hurt Locker