Pinoy Writers Online

By the time "The Hurt Locker" won best picture Sunday night, it seemed almost a foregone conclusion since it previously earned honors from the Producer's Guild, BAFTA, Broadcast Critics, the National Society and critics groups in New York, L.A. and elsewhere.But "Hurt Locker" was anything but a sure thing. In a historical context, its win is surprising.

After all, it is the lowest-grossing best picture winner of all time; it was never on more than 535 movie screens; and it beat the highest-grossing movie in modern history, one that has continued to play on thousands of screens for nearly three months. In the era of blockbusters, "Locker" cost a mere $11 million to make compared with the more than $230 million cost of "Avatar."To earn its gold, "Hurt Locker" had to break what producer Greg Shapiro called "The Iraq War Curse," referring to all the movies touching on that conflict that had failed to find an audience. It had to weather attacks in the media and from some in the military who questioned the realism of how it portrayed the bomb removal unit.The film also drew censure for the behavior of one of its producers, the first to be banned from attending the Academy Awards. And it had to win with backing from Summit Entertainment, a relatively new and small distributor that had never before won an Oscar.

Why Oscar didn't embrace 'Avatar'

It was a shocker when Avatar never won Best Picture. I watched avatar and it was truely awesome. I mean that's not the big part. The greatest evidence is that it's the top grossing film of all time beating Titanic. With that fact alone, it is indeed a good movie. About Hurt Locker, I wouldn't know. I haven't watched it.