The Winners

Just call her the giant slayer. Kathryn Bigelow and her modest little Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker beat out the behemoth box office champ Avatar for best picture, best director, best original screenplay, best editing, best sound editing, and best sound mixing. Bigelow made history, becoming the first female ever to win the award for directing.

James Cameron and company (Avatar) left with a total of three trophies: best visual effects, best art direction and best cinematography. The cinematography award seemed a little odd. After all, most of this film was computer generated, wasn’t it?

There were no real surprises in the acting categories. Best supporting actress went to Mo’nique for Precious, best supporting actor Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds, best actress was Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side, and Jeff Bridges finally won for Crazy Heart.

Up won best animated feature and best original score, while El Secreto do Sus Ojos (Argentina) won best foreign picture. The Cove won best documentary. For an expanded list of major category winners, scroll to the bottom of the article.

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The 82nd annual Academy Award nominations were announced this morning. This is the first year that the Best Picture category has been expanded to ten films. Here is a list of the major category nominees.

For a complete list of all nominees, visit the official site of the Oscars. The Awards take place on Sunday, March 7 at 8/5P on ABC.

Best Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz, Nine
Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhal, Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Mo’nique, Precious

Best Supporting Actor
Matt Damon, Invictus
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Actress
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabourey Sidibie, Precious
Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia

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The SAG (Screen Actor’s Guild) awards aired on Saturday evening. As far as the actual awards given, it was largely a repeat of last week’s Golden Globes.  However, since Avatar was not nominated in any categories, another film  got to bask in the glow of the evening.

Inglourious Basterds won for best ensemble cast, and Christoph Waltz repeated last week’s Golden Globe win. Other repeat winners included Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock, Mo’Nique, Michael C. Hall, Julianna Margulies, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Bacon, and Drew Barrymore.

Despite the lack of  suspense, the show seemed quite a bit more lively and more entertaining than last week’s rather restrained Golden Globes. Here are a few highlights.

Sandra Bullock beat out perennial favorite Meryl Streep, and this was a vote by her peers.  She clearly has won the respect of a lot of naysayers this year. She gave an adorable acceptance speech, and was truly funny when she introduced Betty White for her lifetime achievement award.  This is shaping up to be the year of the Sandra.

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The 67th annual Golden Globes awards took place last night, and Avatar walked away top honors of  Best Picture and Best Director, fueling speculation that it is gaining momentum going into the Oscar nomination race. Avatar and Crazy Heart picked up two awards each, but there were no lopsided wins this year.

Critical darling The Hurt Locker was shut out and went home empty handed.  The Hurt Locker has been cleaning up top honors at Critic Circle awards nationwide. Up in the Air was nominated for six awards, but only won for Best Screenplay.

Veteran actors Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep won acting awards, and delivered particularly elegant and classy acceptance speeches.

On the television side, Dexter fared well, with John Lithgow and Michael C. Hall both winning acting awards.  HBO’s film Grey Gardens won two awards as well.  Mad Men won for Best Television Series, Drama and freshman series Glee won for best Television Series, Comedy or Musical.

A complete list of winners follows. Also, be sure to check out our photo gallery of all the winners after the jump.

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The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HAFTA) announced its 2009 nominees for the Golden Globes this morning. The Golden Globes are considered a harbinger of the Oscar season, even though they  generally throw a few wacky choices into their slate.

For those keeping track, Up in the Air nabbed six nominations, followed by Avatar with four.  Sandra Bullock continues to enjoy a stellar year, as she was nominated for The Blind Side as well as The Proposal. Other double nominees include Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia, It’s Complicated), and Matt Damon (Invictus, The Informant!).  Directors Quentin Tarantino and Jason Reitman each got a nod for directing and screenplay as well.

The Golden Globes ceremony will take place on January 17th, 2010, and will air on NBC.

Here is a list of the nominees in major film categories:

Best Picture, Drama

Avatar

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Precious

Up in the Air

Best Picture, Musical/Comedy

500 Days of Summer

The Hangover

It’s Complicated

Julie and Julia

Nine

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The Blind Side pulled off a pretty nifty feat this weekend. After three weeks in wide release, it finally nabbed the top spot at the weekend box office, making about $20 Million and standing at about a $129 Million cumulative total. It is on track to become the highest grossing movie of Sandra Bullock’s career.

In second place, New Moon looks like it is finally cooling off a bit. In its third week, the movie made about $15.7 Million, and dropped another 63% (after a steep drop off of 70% last week.) Domestically, it crossed the $250 Million mark.

Newcomer Brothers made a modest $9.7 Million. Starring Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhal, and Tobey Maguire, I thought the movie about an Iraq War veteran returning home would fare better. Holdover A Christmas Carol hung in for the number four spot, and made an additional $7.2 Million.  Its cumulative take now stands at about $115 Million. Old Dogs managed to land the fifth spot in the top  five.

Star-laden Everybody’s Fine (Robert De Niro, Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, and Kate Beckinsdale star) failed to find an audience, and brought in an anemic $4 Million. George Clooney’s critically hailed Up In The Air only played on 15 screens. but made over $1.1 Million, for an impressive $79,000 per screen average.

As far as I know, Paramount is testing the waters for this film, and they should be pleased with the weekend performance. Hopefully they will go ahead and open wide now rather than roll it out slowly. Overall, it was a soft weekend, which is typical of the after-Thanksgiving weekend box office.

This week on The Flickcast, Chris and Matt welcome special guest Shannon Hood and launch into a whole slew of new topics including the rise of fangirl power, the huge success of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the relative merits of Sandra Bullock and her film The Blind Side, some more interesting Thor casting news, what holiday movies they are looking forward to seeing, how the entertainment business is changing, and needs to change more, to stay competitive and a whole lot more.

Chris, Matt and Shannon also made some cool picks this week including Shannon’s pick of The Road, Matt’s pick of the new British series Misfits and Chris’ pick of the recent Blu-ray release of J.J. Abrams Star Trek.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques or offers of sponsorship, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter and at Facebook, MySpace or via email.

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I don’t particularly like Sandra Bullock, and I really dislike sports movies, so logic dictates that I would not care for The Blind Side. I saw the trailer, and like everyone else I wrote this film off as a heaping pile of Hallmark Channel goo.

I gritted my teeth and vowed to trudge through the movie, and instead I got one of the biggest surprises (to me) of the year. The Blind Side is good. Really good. Sandra Bullock gives her best performance to date. The story is touching, inspirational and timely.

In the tradition of Rudy, The Rookie, Remember the Titans, and Hoosiers, The Blind Side is based on a true story. Michael Oher is wandering the streets in Memphis in the bitter cold clad only in shorts and a t-shirt, when the wealthy Tuohy family sees him. After the daughter recognizes him from her school, Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock) demands that her husband pull over the car.

She offers him a couch to sleep on that night, but after she discovers he has nowhere to go and no clothing, she buys him a wardrobe and eventually offers him a room in their palatial mansion. The Tuohys eventually adopt Michael, who went  on to play football at Ole Miss, and currently plays for the Baltimore Ravens as a rookie tackle.

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