Critic's Confession: Seeing Oscar Movies Is a Big Pain

First directing honors for a woman as Iraq thriller reaps 5 awards

(AP) - The Iraq war thriller The Hurt Locker earned the Best Picture Academy Award tonight, and Kathryn Bigelow won for best director. Bigelow is the first woman in the 82-year history of the Oscars to earn Hollywood's top prize for filmmakers. Among those Bigelow beat were ex-husband James Cameron, the best director winner for 1997's Titanic, who was nominated this time for his sci-fi spectacle Avatar. Bigelow and Cameron were married from 1989 to 1991. More»

Food, drink, and fashion flubs start awards season off right

(NEWSER) - Awards season unofficially begins with tonight's Golden Globes ceremony, an alcohol-addled free-for-all that makes the Oscar telecast feel like a prayer meeting. Breeanna Hare of CNN runs down 10 reasons the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's shindig beats the Academy Awards:

• Booze: "The Globes would not be the Globes if the nominees weren't loose enough to potentially shirk their handler's instructions and drop an F-bomb or two during an acceptance speech."

Some execs remain opposed to expanded Best Picture nominee list

(NEWSER) - The point of doubling the number of Academy Award best picture nominees this year was to draw more viewers to the show. The pitfall: Hardly anything Oscar worthy has emerged, writes Kim Masters for the Daily Beast. And while most nominees hit theaters later in the year, 30% fewer films will come out this year than during that time in 2008. More»

Funny and un-funny moments abound at ceremony

(NEWSER) - Oscar night was filled with highs and lows, from the predictably inspirational moments when Kate Winslet finally won and Heath Ledger’s family received his posthumous award, to the cheap shot of producers cutting to Angelina Jolie’s face during Jennifer Aniston’s presenter speech. More from the Los Angeles Times. Best:

• Sean Penn opened his acceptance speech by greeting “you Commie, homo-loving sons-of-a-gun.”

'Nazi porn' asks use to 'empathize with mass murderer'

(NEWSER) - Mounting criticism of The Reader as an apologia for the Nazis is seriously undermining Kate Winslet's chances for an Oscar, reports the Telegraph. Critics have blasted the film as "Nazi porn," and the author of a book on Hitler charged in a recent article in Slate that it "asks us to empathize with an unrepentant mass murderer." Winslet plays an illiterate concentration camp guard who later seeks redemption by learning to read. More»