The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Anyone watch the segment on 60 Minutes about the film and Kathryn last night?

Has it been posted online? Also, anyone hear about the kerfuffle the film's producer made with some email he wrote to the Oscar voters? I can't see what's wrong with him sticking up for his movie. I can see a lot of people worried that the Academy will let Avatar steamroll a few films.

[reno dakota]

Has it been posted online?

It has, indeed.

[Zot!]

Has it been posted online?

It has, indeed.

Huge spoiler alert kids, if you haven't seen this and want to, don't watch this.

[Dadapass]

Sued

[jbeall]

Why do I have the sinking feeling that this producer's interference just clinched Best Pic for Avatar? The Academy hates to be told what to do--remember the year Million Dollar Baby and The Sea Inside both won in their respective categories b/c conservative groups complained about the films' messages? I'd love to be wrong, though.

[domino harvey]

The Hurt Locker may or may not win, but Avatar is definitely not going to win

[foofighters7]

The Hurt Locker may or may not win, but Avatar is definitely not going to win

May the words of Harvey of Domino prove true in the year of our Lord two-thousand and ten.

I think I should just skip it this year and go play basketball. Sad really...Ever so sad.

[jbeall]

The Hurt Locker may or may not win, but Avatar is definitely not going to win

I said roughly the same thing about Brokeback Mountain and Crash a few years ago. Since then, I've realized that it's impossible to underestimate the Academy.

[Fiery Angel]

With 10 nominees, anything's possible.

[Finch]

Even Thank You For Smoking Part Two would be preferable to Avatar.

[skuhn8]

Finally had a chance to catch this in the cinema this afternoon. I won't go into my thoughts on it other than to say that I'd finally give the Academy some respect if they gave this one Best Picture. Absolutely floored me. Two hours without once injecting a 'We shouldn't even be here' moment--hell of a tight rope performance. Kudos.

[manicsounds]

Had my money on Avatar as best picture, but looks like now, The Hurt Locker is the lowest grossing best picture winner out there.

[HistoryProf]

This amused me:

[John Cope]

Shaviro's wonderful appreciation of both this film and Bigelow's career generally.

For my part, though the film is reliably strong it is really only in the last few minutes that it attains true greatness and also a genuinely profound mythic reach. I can think of few directors working today (certainly Mann and Lynch would be two others) who have such mastery over and confidence with the power of image and sound synthesized without falling into simple minded bombast.

[Dualist]

For my part, though the film is reliably strong it is really only in the last few minutes that it attains true greatness and also a genuinely profound mythic reach. I can think of few directors working today (certainly Mann and Lynch would be two others) who have such mastery over and confidence with the power of image and sound synthesized without falling into simple minded bombast.

Could you expand this, please...

[Zot!]

It's cool that you like Bigelow, but I stopped reading at...
The homoerotic tension/attraction between Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze is itself immersed in the dynamics of waves and water. Surfer hedonism is taken up and transcended by the universal upswelling of a fluid dynamics.
This is the kind of pretentious obscuring of what is ultimately a B action movie that makes people hate film snobs.

[Yojimbo]

Caught this last night and it is awesome. Finally an Iraq film that isn't ruined by politics. She got outstanding perfs from the 3 relatively unknown leads. Plus it was shot in 16mm rather than video so looks much better than the DV Iraq flicks like that godawful DePalma abortion.

Bigelow did a lengthy Q&A that was remarkably vacuous. She's smokin' however \:D/. And when some chick in the audience asked her what it was like to be a female director she basically told her to fuck off.

It is being released theatrically in the US on June 26.

FINALLY caught up with this tonight
I've been a fan of Bigelow's films since I saw either 'The Loveless' or 'Blue Steel' in the early 90's- I can't remember which came first- but this is on a higher plane than anything I've seen from her before.

Brilliant piece of cinema, and I'm just sorry I didn't catch it on the big screen!

And great and all as individual 'action' or inaction' scenes were that final coda was both a brave choice to make, and a great success.

I'm hard pressed to think of a better American war movie
(and I don't rate 'Paths of Glory' as highly as most seem to do)

[knives]

Thin Red Line?

[Yojimbo]

Thin Red Line?

I'm not a Malick fan
(other than 'Badlands')
He just tends to wallow in preciousness too much for my taste.

[erok910]

I havent watched this movie since it was in theaters. I was wildly impressed by it. It had weird aspects i suppose, but it was really great in my opinion. I think it sort of destroys whatever Whiplash was attempting. Being a point between Jarhead and Generation Kill. Obviously i appreciate the aspects of beurocracy in generation kill, but this movie was a story of obsession via metaphor. Some sort of surreality of war i loved in it. It also reminded me of Adam McKay with The Big Short in that these movies, masterpieces perhaps, emboldened the filmmakers to push and create films that were aggressively mediocre, in my opinion. Really impreased by this film.


Sorry if bad english.