Hurt Locker

It's no good moaning about how there's nothing to see this summer except movies based on toys. If you want adult films in theaters, you have to support the good ones the way kids support "Transformers" -- without reservation. Out right now is one of the year's best films, Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker." It's got the killer impact of the explosive devices that are the heart of its plot: It simply blows you apart and doesn't bother putting you back together again.

Beaten down by the recession? Want a sunny respite from the dreary weather? Need two hours to get away from the holiday stress? Hollywood has the answer: movies about a crumbling marriage, a 4-year-old's death in a car accident and a single father dying of cancer. The fall and winter movie seasons always deliver some demanding dramas, but the gloom factor this year feels so intense that "127 Hours" ? in which the lead character hacks off his own arm ? plays like a bubbly comedy in comparison.

Kathryn Bigelow has received a few genre awards for "Near Dark" and "Strange Days." But with "The Hurt Locker," it's a whole new game: CRITICS CHOICE AWARD 2010: Nominated as best director for "The Hurt Locker." GOLDEN GLOBES 2010: Nominations for best director and best motion picture drama for "The Hurt Locker." GOTHAM AWARDS 2009: Nominated for best film with producers Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro. 2009: Given the Tribute Award for career achievement.

Michael Douglas made the dark, indie comedy "Solitary Man" last year before being diagnosed with throat cancer. The irony of playing a man running from a doctor's diagnosis, fearful that his days are numbered, and with a smaller number than he had imagined, isn't lost on Douglas or the man who wrote the movie. "The film has a bizarre resonance, particularly that last hunk of dialogue Michael has in the movie where he says he's not going to let some diagnosis define him," says Brian Koppelman, who wrote "Solitary Man" and co-directed it with David Levien.

Original screenplay 'The Hurt Locker' Mark Boal A war reporter turned screenwriter, Mark Boal spent time embedded with American bomb disposal experts in Iraq. From his experience was born his original screenplay for "The Hurt Locker," a high-stress, vérité -style drama that details a few months in the lives of bomb technicians working the front lines. "Oh, my God, thank you," Boal said upon accepting his award. "You honor me and humble me more than you know."

Sound mixing "The Hurt Locker" Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett In what was the second award of the night for sound editor Paul N.J. Ottosson and the first for mixer Ray Beckett, "The Hurt Locker" swept the sound categories, perhaps proof, at the least, of the common Oscar wisdom that the loudest war film always wins. The mixing took its cues from the characters in Kathryn Bigelow's testosterone-drenched film, as well as a rich sense of place. Speaking backstage, Ottosson called Staff Sgt. William James, played by Jeremy Renner, "a very confident man. So we were trying to duplicate that as well in sound throughout the movie."

David slew Goliath. The small independent war drama "The Hurt Locker" won six Academy Awards on Sunday night, including best picture and director for Kathryn Bigelow -- marking the first time a woman has taken home such an honor. In doing so, the film, which has grossed less than $15 million, beat out the biggest box office film ever, James Cameron's sci-fi epic, "Avatar." Adding to the drama of it all: Bigelow used to be married to Cameron. "There's no other way to describe this, it's the moment of a lifetime," said a tremulous Bigelow, upon receiving the directing Oscar at the 82nd annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre.

"Hurt Locker" screenwriter Mark Boal remembers running around the Jordanian desert with director Kathryn Bigelow, watching her scale hills in 115-degree heat to set up shots for their modestly budgeted film. By the end of the day, when everyone else was exhausted, Bigelow would look like she was just beginning her morning, raring and ready to go shoot the next scene. "She's got those Viking genes," Boal says. "I'm serious. They live forever, those people. It's the Viking genes and a whole lot of salmon."

"Avatar" won a record-breaking six Critics' Choice Movie Awards on Friday night, but it was the independent Iraq war drama "The Hurt Locker" took home the best picture honors from the Broadcast Film Critics Assn. Kathryn Bigelow also won as director of the harrowing ensemble war film. "The Hurt Locker," which is nominated for best picture and director at Sunday's Golden Globes, has received the lion's share of critics' awards, including honors from the L.A. Film Critics Assn.

"The Hurt Locker" left "Avatar" in the dust Sunday at the 2010 Orange British Academy Film Awards, winning best film, best director for Kathryn Bigelow, original screenplay for Mark Boal, cinematography, editing and sound. "Avatar" won for visual effects and production design at the awards show, presented at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden. Though "The Hurt Locker" lost the Golden Globe in the category of best dramatic film to "Avatar," the gripping ensemble drama about a bomb-disposal unit in Iraq has won the lion's share of the critics' awards.

Debra Granik's "Winter's Bone," a gritty drama about an Ozark teenager who must put herself in harm's way in her search for her drug-dealing father, was named best film of 2010 at the 20th anniversary Gotham Film Awards on Monday evening in New York. "Winter's Bone," the Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance in January, also won for best ensemble performance for Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Dale Dickey, Lauren Sweetser, Garret Dillahunt and Devin Breznahan. Best documentary honors went to Laura Poitras' "The Oath.

The boy wizard couldn't beat the teen vampires. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ? Part 1" sold $24 million in tickets in its debut late Thursday night with shows that started at or soon after midnight, according to an estimate from Warner Bros. That's $1.8 million more than the last movie in the series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," brought in from midnight shows when it debuted in June 2009. It's well short, however, of the record set in July by "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," which grossed more than $30 million during its late-night launch.

Four years ago, a controversial British film called "Death of a President" stormed into the Toronto International Film Festival. The media was abuzz about its premise, which imagined that George W. Bush had been assassinated and Dick Cheney had ascended to the presidency. It became the hottest ticket of the festival that year and inspired intense debate about the limits of artistic and political expression — before fizzling in commercial release. Toronto, the preeminent North American gathering for top-tier filmmakers that starts Thursday and runs through next weekend, generates more heat and contention than almost any other festival.

Familiarity is not necessarily the friend of the Iraq moviegoer. As The Times' foreign editor from 2002-08, I visited Baghdad before and after the U.S. invasion, then followed the occupation and sectarian war for nearly six years. In short, I am a journalist and I know the story. So while I understand that filmmakers marry truth to fiction, and that "Green Zone," "The Ghost Writer" and "The Hurt Locker" are entertainment above all, I can't help but worry that cinema's altered reality will be taken as fact, which it most certainly is not. I instinctively scrutinize the films for accuracy, enjoying a sense of deja vu in the moments they get right, and cringing at the distortions when they don't.

I loved the Oscar telecast. I thought the producers did an elegant and irreverent job with the whole show. And Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were perfect. Judy Silk Pacific Palisades :: Who picked those two guys to host the Academy Awards? I was available. Bill Simpson :: The dyspeptic review that Mary McNamara wrote ["A Show With No Sense of Timing," March 8] left me wondering: How many antacid pills did she miss taking? My family and I were oohing and aahing over the opening scene that would have made Busby Berkeley envious!

Everyone wants the chance to dream, and if Sunday night's Oscar results are any indication, the people who work in the dream factory most of all. It takes away nothing from "The Hurt Locker," which really was the best film of the year, or the exceptional directing job done by Kathryn Bigelow, to speculate that more than the acknowledgment of excellence was behind that film's triumph in the hotly contested best picture race. It seems fair to say that an almost subconscious yearning in part motivated the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to vote the way they did. A yearning for a Hollywood that once existed but doesn't anymore, a Hollywood where films like "The Hurt Locker" were business as usual and not something that was such an aberration, so outside of current norms, that it very nearly didn't get made at all. But if you voted for "The Hurt Locker," you could pretend that wasn't so. You could vote for a dream of a better world where these films lived long and prospered.

Wins by film Here are the films that won more than a single Oscar: "The Hurt Locker" ... 6 "Avatar" ... 3 "Crazy Heart" ... 2 "Up" ... 2 "Precious" ... 2

"The Hurt Locker," a gritty, challenging and little-seen drama about bomb disposal in the Iraq war, was the leading winner with six Academy Awards on Sunday night, including best picture and the first directing honor for a female filmmaker. Academy Award organizers had doubled this year's best-picture contest to 10 movies to rope in more mass-appeal hits and boost the ceremony's ratings; but "The Hurt Locker," an emotionally exhausting account of an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, stands apart as the lowest-grossing film in modern history to capture Hollywood's highest award.