INT.   HOLLYWOOD STUDIO CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY

“Hurt Locker” scribe MARK BOAL slams his mighty fist down hard on the conference room table, making the HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVES surrounding him jump in their leather seats.

MARK BOAL

Now listen up.  I don’t care about your liberal preconceptions and your smug certainty that you’re somehow better than those men and women out there in Afghanistan and Iraq just because you work in the movie industry and they actually work!

EXECUTIVE NO. 1

But, but…

MARK BOAL (pointing an accusing finger)

Put a sock in it, meat puppet!  You want to use those American heroes as a backdrop for some politician’s reelection campaign?  Well, you can take my Oscar and stick it in your Fonda-hole!  I’m not having any part of it!

Ed. Note:  We now pause for a photo of sensitive, introspective hipster Boal:

Big Hollywood has been all over the story of screenwriter Mark Boal’s collaboration with the Obama campaign’s usurpation of the work of our SEALs and other covert warriors in hunting down Osama bin Laden.  It’s outrageous – you know you’ve crossed a line in the sand of decency when even Jurassic liberal-saur Maureen Dowd seems creeped out by your shameless SEALS-ploitation.

As Big Hollywood has pointed out before, Boal is Hollywood’s go-to guy for sending the leftist message du jour about our troops.  When President Bush was in office and the party line was that fighting terrorists was a bad thing, Boal was there with In the Valley of Elah (2007).  That one painted our soldiers as hideous psychopaths driven crazy by the war, so nuts and evil they murdered one of their own because of, well, Bush or something.

But always one to be surfing the liberal zeitgeist, Boal caught the wave of supporting our troops with The Hurt Locker.  His script was superficially sympathetic to our warriors, but when you got past Kathryn Bigelow’s well-staged action scenes, all you had was an over-wrought fantasy that depicted our fearless bomb disposal troopers as unstable, undisciplined clowns.  The guy who claims Boal used him as material was not impressed either; he sued.

Not surprisingly, reinforcing Hollywood’s stereotypes about military people as alien, scary freaks, got Boal an Oscar.

Afterward, Boal went back to reporting and writing anti-soldier hit pieces like The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians for that Tiger Beat of the sagging baby boomer set, Rolling Stone magazine.  His laughable reporting drew a forceful rejoinder from the legendary Michael Yon (Calling BULLSHIT on ‘Rolling Stone’).

Yon is the real deal and trusted by the troops.  Yon’s column points out distortions and omissions in Boal’s reportage.  As a reporter, when you get the small things wrong, it’s no surprise when your big picture conclusions are just as flawed.  Not that the liberals whose prejudices his writing studiously reinforce care much about accuracy, but maybe Boal would be better off learning a little more about the organization he purports to write about and spending a little less effort cultivating the neo-hipster, tousled-hair-and-goatee look he’s been rocking in all those paparazzi pics.

Now comes a chance to work hand-in-hand with the Obama campaign to create a movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.  Apparently, the hunt for Saddam Hussein was of no interest (or use) to Boal, it having taken place under the wrong president.

What are the chances that Boal won’t come through with what the liberal establishment wants?  About zero – he’s never let them down before.  With an October 12, 2012, release date, this is a transparent attempt to distract attention from the utter disaster the Administration’s ultra-liberals policies have inflicted upon the economy.  Boal, along with director Bigelow and the Obama-backing Sony studio, are eager to help.  Dollars to doughnuts, the focus of this tribute won’t be the men and women who risked their lives but the candidate who made the “gutsy call” that anyone else would have made too.

But then, Boal has made a career of meeting liberal expectations within his little niche as the Hollywood hipster who always writes just what his bosses want to hear about the military.

Boal rises from his chair and takes his Oscar in hand.

MARK BOAL

You make me sick.  I’m done with you.  I’m walking out of here and down to a Supercuts to get a high and tight and to get rid of this stupid hipster goatee.

EXECUTIVE NO. 1

Come back!  What will we do when we need someone to write another script pretending to support the troops while actually depicting them as psycho losers and mindless stooges of the Bu$hitler-Haliburton wars for oil?

MARK BOAL

It shouldn’t be hard to find someone else like that here in Hollywood.  After all, when you’re looking for a turd, what better place to look than a toilet?

Boal takes the OBAMA ’12 button off his jacket and tosses it on the table, then storms out the door and into the sunset. The button spins on the wood surface…..

FADE OUT.

Sadly, all characters appearing in this work are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Director Kathryn Bigelow with screenwriter Mark Boal

Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow, those responsible for anti-war film The Hurt Locker, have decided to assist President Obama in his re-election. Together, they have been granted unprecedented access to some of America’s most classified data pertaining the death of Osama Bin Laden and the dark secretive world of our U.S. Navy SEAL’s and Joint Special Operations Command. They will be using this information to create a film about the “heroic leadership” within this administration based upon the U.S. led Navy SEAL kill mission which inevitably made OBL fish food.

It wouldn’t be surprising at all to see anti-war actors like Sean Penn, George Clooney, or Matt Damon partake with leading roles.

Sony Pictures is behind this madness and the same politicians who so tirelessly have gone out of their way to prosecute CIA and military interrogators are supporting them. With an S&P rating lower than any president, Obama needs all the help he can get for re-election.

Timing is everything. The release of this film is scheduled to open October 12th. October leaves just enough time to socially condition a grave amount of Americans in believing President Obama is truly the “chosen one.”

The President just addressed the nation on August 8th where he expressed sincere condolences for the loss of 31 Special Operators this past weekend in Afghanistan. His words, like normal, never add up to his actions. He has failed to disrupt Hollywood’s new film as he fully understands what type of push this could provide during such troubling times under his Presidency.

The shallowness of Washington and Hollywood combined is unfathomable. 31 lives have just been lost, 31 families shattered, and 31 new graves will be dug, yet some elitists would love to capitalize on their lives all for their own agendas.

As a combat disabled veteran, I am outraged. These were my brothers in arms– your sons, nephews, teammates, and our nation’s truest of heroes. With $50-75 million used to create and market this film, this money should be construed as fraud, waste, and abuse.

No matter the cost, I for one will be protesting this film.

Trailer is NSFW

Its cinema verité style, interspersed with commentary from soldiers interviewed after the deployment, puts you in the center of the action – and inaction – alongside a half dozen or so principal characters. It captures the chaos and the boredom, the courage and the fear, the tension and the playful abandon of their stretch in Outpost Restrepo, named after their young medic, a Korengal casualty.

In between IED attacks, firefights, digging in on a cliff-side, negotiating compensation with the villagers for a dead cow, mourning dead comrades, rooting out arms caches in the village, and general horsing around, these soldiers, painfully young but becoming men before our eyes, offer honest and revealing emotions about these experiences. One soldier says he can barely get his head around it all; he just hopes that “one day I’ll be able to process it differently.”

There is no commentary, however, from politicians, military brass, family, or the filmmakers themselves, who have studiously stripped away any political context for their subject. “The only goal,” they say in their press kit, “is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 94-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you.”

Co-directors Junger and Hetherington explain that “the war in Afghanistan has become highly politicized, but soldiers rarely take part in that discussion… Their experiences are important to understand, regardless of one’s political beliefs.” Absolutely true. But they go on to say that “Beliefs can be a way of avoiding looking at reality. This is reality.”

Maybe so, but avoiding beliefs can be a way of avoiding looking at reality, too. Beliefs can give clarity, meaning, and purpose to reality, as well as shape reality itself; a clash of belief systems is the reason those soldiers were in the Korengal in the first place. To strip away the proper context deprives the audience of a perspective that might have infused the film with greater depth and power. In all fairness, that would be a different movie – a complex, fascinating one perhaps, but one the filmmakers were anxious to avoid.

“Most of documentaries about Iraq and Afghanistan so far have been political polemics, and I think the public is exhausted by them,” says Junger, best-known as the author of The Perfect Storm. The Los Angeles Times echoes this approvingly, noting that the filmmakers of current war documentaries “say that audiences at this historical moment are best served by films that center on specific players instead of the larger conflict.”

Actually, what the public is exhausted by, and never responded to favorably in the first place, is the relentless cinematic depiction of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as unwinnable quagmires, and our prosecution of them as illegal and immoral, in such documentaries as Taxi to the Dark Side, No End in Sight, and The Road to Guantanamo – not to mention Hollywood dramas like Redacted, Lions for Lambs and The Green Zone.

The inconvenient truth that the Times is eager to sweep under the carpet is that such left-leaning films about the current conflicts do not fill theaters, even if they win Oscars, like Taxi to the Dark Side (and even The Hurt Locker, which is a more ambiguous case). Their message: America is bad, our cause is unjust, and war is bad anyway, so we should bring our troops home. Thus Junger is correct that the public does respond more favorably to the rare, politically neutral films that at least honor the troops, such as Taking Chance, Brothers at War, and now, Restrepo.

So he and Hetherington strove for an almost claustrophobically tight focus on the soldiers themselves, and in that respect, their documentary is a compelling slice of military life under circumstances extraordinary even for wartime. “Soldiers are living, fighting and dying at remote outposts in Afghanistan in conditions that few Americans back home can imagine,” Junger rightfully notes. These warriors are too busy doing their job and dodging bullets to debate foreign policy.

But there remains a nagging blind spot to this narrow focus of these politically neutral films: the context of who our enemy is and why we’re fighting them. The Taliban don’t even get a cameo in Restrepo. The reality, as Junger puts it, is not just the soldiers’ day-to-day experience; the larger reality is that our troops are pitted against an implacable religious fanaticism that is a towering threat to democracy, freedom, and modernity itself; a fanaticism about which our leaders are too often in denial even if theirs aren’t. The Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe reports that when an Army officer in the valley attempted to reach out to the leader of the Korengali, the response was “If you surrender to the law of Allah then our war against you will end. If you keep fighting for man’s law then we will fight you until Doomsday.”

And therein lies the essence of our Forever War with radical Islam: sharia law versus democracy, in an apocalyptic death match for the future of humanity. Contrary to the Left’s portrayal of this clash, it is a just cause, we are the good guys, and war may be hell but it is sometimes necessary to do battle with evil. This is the true context and the cinematic message that will resonate with audiences.

That’s not to say that we’re handling the conflict well. The reality is also that our troops in Afghanistan are hamstrung by the most restrictive Rules of Engagement in the history of warfare. Our enemy’s clear mission is to drive the infidel from Muslim lands and ultimately from the face of the earth, hacking off civilian and military heads indiscriminately along the way. Our military mission is a nation-building, hearts-and-minds-winning counterinsurgency strategy whose success is measured by “how people feel.”  Ludicrously, we now hand out medals for “courageous restraint” (what I wouldn’t give to hear General Patton’s take on that oxymoron). This context adds a disturbing new dimension to the daily reality of the Restrepo characters and soldiers just like them stationed in Afghanistan.

See Restrepo for its visceral impact and its sympathetic, charismatic cast of real-life heroes (including one quiet young man whose mother he calls “a f***ing hippie” who wouldn’t even allow him a squirt gun as a child). Then remember the context in which those soldiers and many more like them struggle, a larger reality that the film doesn’t address. I can’t sum up that context better than the brilliant British journalist and cultural critic Melanie Phillips:

[T]he Afghanistan war… will hit the buffers unless someone gets a grip. And that means fighting this war as if it really is a war and not a “nation-building” exercise; and saying unequivocally that America is there for as long as it takes because, however awful and bloody this conflict is, the alternative – a jihadi-boosting defeat for the west and the Talebanisation of Pakistan – is infinitely worse.

This episode certainly speaks for itself, but there’s one thing I should note. If you found the first episode a little intense, you might want to steer clear of this one, as it makes the first one look like “The Brady Bunch.” Sample comment from someone who called me about a week after watching it: “I’ve been disturbed all week.” You will be taking one giant leap further into the heart of darkness. Shortly into the next episode, you will be firmly at its center.

And then I’ll have something to say.

**STRONG CONTENT WARNING**

If you’re new to all this, just click here for all the background, including the series prologue and Episode One, “Return To Ramadi.”

You can also see episodes from my time in the Triangle of Death, prior to Ramadi, as referenced in the series prologue, here.

Blogging is easy!

Such was the case with my analysis of  The Hurt Locker. I loved the film. After watching it, however, the thing that bothered me was the quote at the beginning, “War is a drug.” In the end, it serves as the theme of the film, but I found it to be way off the mark, and not even supported by the film itself. To me, The Hurt Locker seemed to be clearly not about addiction, but about purpose. What would motivate someone to return to a horrific war zone, to face death and dismemberment on a daily basis? A sense of purpose. That is what motivates people, not “a rush.”

I set to writing. Then I read Walter Owen’s piece in Vanity Fair, who put it together better than I would have:

But the director of The Hurt Locker brings you close. Which makes all the more baffling the epigraph that fills the screen, a line of slipshod poesy by the respected war correspondent Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” That might have served as profound insight in Avatar, but in The Hurt Locker it only raises the question of how a director who could conceive such a spare and unremitting movie could also fall for such facile hokum.

I love that. And I wish I said it, because I love using phrases like “facile hokum.” But it bears repeating: The Hurt Locker is a great film, but it’s stated theme is way off base. Did the director and writer really believe this? I often find myself watching movies and saying, “I love this! But these filmmakers don’t seem to know what this film is about!”

That, I believe, is not the case with The Hurt Locker. I think that Katherine Bigelow and Mark Boal knew exactly what film they were making, and they knew that the quote was facile hokum, too. So why open the film with it? O.K., here’s where I get to have an original thought: The quote is marketing. It is there to give reviewers permission to praise the film. Just think what would happen if they made the exact same film, but opened with a quote from, say, Walter Owen:

As long as men still feel they are nothing without a call to duty, they will look for a place in the world where they find themselves excellent at something. One of those places is, and has always been, battle.

Critics would have hated it. It does not buy into their worldview, that soldiers are dumb rednecks who are forced to fight for their country because of lack of education and economic opportunity. They are victims. They are addicts.

The Hurt Locker does not portray these men as victims, but the quote at the beginning gives the critics cover – “It’s not their choice- it’s an addiction. They can’t help themselves.” That explains everything, including the film’s almost universal (and deserved) praise.

So kudos to Bigelow and Boal. They not only made a very watchable film, they played the press and Academy voters like a fiddle, which is, for me, even more fun to watch.

The Academy Awards show has a fine tradition of pampered celebrities popping off with something stupid when they hit the stage.  It must be something about TV cameras and the opportunity to make damn fools of themselves before tens of millions of people around the world that the Hollywoodoids find irresistible.  Notice how you never hear any fallout from the “technical awards” ceremony?  You know, the non televised ceremony recognizing the boring technological stuff that actually makes movies possible that is usually held at the Beverly Hills Elks Lodge with hosts Steve Guttenberg, Charo and/or one of the lesser Sweathogs.

Some of the past magic moments are legendary.  Remember back in 1993, when Tim Robbins and his then-gal pal, tranny vomit insanity enthusiast Susan Sarandon, harangued the crowd about the detention of Haitian refugees?  Of course, right after that these stars led the way by opening up the grounds of their mansion to these huddled Haitian masses.

Roberto Benigni engaged in memorably tiresome antics after winning “Best Foreign Language Film of 1997” for the Worst Film of All Time, the insanely appalling Life Is Beautiful.  Life has certainly aged well, and Benigni’s shtick has only gotten fresher, contributing to the runaway freight train of success that his career has become since then.

Another highlight was the 1973 appearance of Indian activist Sacheen Littlefeather to accept Marlon Brando’s Oscar for The Godfather.  Of course, after that powerful indictment of American society, things began to change.  Her earnest speech was the inspiration behind the movement to allow Native Americans to reject reservation socialism, to fully embrace the free market model, and to find prosperity delivering quality entertainment, gaming and vacation opportunities to their fellow Americans.  Or so I’ve heard.  Little known fact:  She convinced Brando to let her accept the award by offering him a muffin.

Occasionally the real people who actually make movies happen – the teamsters, the grips, and the other hardscrabble folks behind the scenes – will make their presence known during a particularly stupid speech.  For example, back in 2003, Michael Moore decided to use his win to spout off as America headed to war in Iraq.  Running down our country in front of a teamster?  Bad, bad idea.   The thunderous booing of these all-American Joes and Janes humiliated the clown who fancies himself their voice – not that he’d be caught dead within a dozen miles of blue collar Americans.  It also led to Steve Martin’s joke about Big Mikey being helped into his limo’s trunk – a zinger on a couple levels.  Moore was lucky to get out of there without an Oscar suppository.

So who is going to spout off this year?  Oh, the competition is fierce.

Let’s look at the Best Picture nominees.  There’s what – 37 of them this year?  So many opportunities to say something dumb.  

The Blind Side and Up are positive pictures with important messages of hope, so we don’t need to bother with thinking about what happens if they win because they won’t.  A Serious Man takes religion kind of seriously; count that out too.

The same with District 9, though if it does sneak through – remember 3-6 Mafia – then expect the producers to repeat, in an indecipherable Boer accent, its profound message that apartheid of intergalactic crustaceans is very, very bad.

Up In The Air is a movie about (among other things) the trauma of losing your livelihood.  Don’t hold your breath for an unflattering reference to the current Administration’s campaign of employment extermination.  At best, watch for an “It’s still all Bush’s fault!” sideswipe if George Clooney takes Best Actor.

The same is true of the urban nightmare Precious.  As we know, the ghetto was a fairytale wonderland before the BusHitler contingent came in and ruined it.

A win for An Education, a tale of a teenage girl having sex with an adult, is the perfect moment for a shout-out of solidarity with Roman Polanski – who, after all, is the real victim.   

If Inglorious Basterds wins, look for lots of log-rolling about how brave the Academy was to choose it, with its graphic violence, interminable stretches of over-praised dialogue and coherence-optional story line.  The courageous ballot-casters of Hollywood are the real heroes.  And heaven forbid chatty Quentin Tarantino win as Best Director.  First, he’s an overpraised hack.  Second, his speech will take 20 minutes out of our lives that we’ll never get back.

You’ll hear plenty about how the producers “support” our soldiers if The Hurt Locker pulls off Best Picture.  It would be nice to hear some support for servicemembers not just as tragic victims but for their performance in winning the war they found (and still find) important enough to volunteer to go off and risk their lives fighting.  In the off chance that someone, somehow should utter the word “victory,” watch the entire proceedings come to a flying stop.

If Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win Best Director, expect lots of talk of glass ceilings, breaking barriers and “the pioneers who came before me.”  That’s all okay – she really is a trailblazer, you know, kind of like Sarah Palin.  Nice to see Hollywood finally catching up with the Republican Party on gender diversity.

Now, if Jeremy Renner wins Best Actor for The Hurt Locker, I expect nothing but class.  This is a guy who seems to have worked hard, perfected his craft, and finally caught a break.  In interviews he seems not entitled but – gasp! – grateful, and he always gives credit to others like Anthony Mackie, his co-star who was freakin’ robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Similarly, if Sandra Bullock wins for her role as a decent human being – for many other actors, this is a huge stretch – I expect a classy speech.  The same is true about Meryl Streep and the rest of the Best Actress contenders.  However, in the Best Supporting Actor category, we might have some awesome opportunities for inanity. 

Matt Damon is nominated and he’s sure to pick up Tim Robbins’ Torch O’ Stupidity and carry it aloft.  There’s health care reform, climate change and, of course, supporting the troops but not the war – it’s a cornucopia of topics upon which he can offer the full benefit of his inexperience.

Woody Harrelson plays a soldier, so should he win, look for some “We support the soldiers but not the war” nonsense – assuming he moderates his pre-ceremony bong hit intake enough to find the stage.

And then there’s Avatar, the bête noir of Big Hollywood.  Will we see James Cameron issue a humble statement of regret that its giddy depiction of American soldiers being slaughtered was misconstrued?  Doubtful, since it hasn’t been misconstrued.  Cameron’s petty god complex has been in full effect for a couple of decades now, so don’t look for humility.  More likely, if the King of the World wins we’ll see shrill crowing about his come-from-behind triumph over the unnamed “critics” who refuse to suspend their disbelief and love of country and embrace the magic that is his masterpiece, Space Fahrenheit-Pocahontas 9/11.  

And, no matter what, to the extent it comes up, he’ll “support” the troops.  They always support the troops.  Just not anything the troops actually do.

And it’s Avatar by a nose! If history is any indication, James Cameron’s eco-action flick will be the big winner at the industry’s annual self-love fest. Three main factors point to the bloated opus taking home the best picture statue.

First off, it’s a box office smash. Now, that doesn’t always translate into gold at the Oscars – see last year’s unconscionable failure to even nominate The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s critically praised film that was, at the time, the second-highest grossing film of all time – but it’s a pretty solid indicator.

Recall Cameron’s previous triumph: Titanic received decidedly mixed reviews, turning into an awards-season juggernaut only after racking up record-breaking dough at the box office. You could make the argument that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King benefited in the same way, serving as the capstone to a trilogy that grossed more than a billion dollars domestically and almost two billion more overseas.

Also consider that in recent history one of the top two grossing nominees usually picks up the win. That would suggest the most likely victor this year is either Avatar or Up; given that the Academy is even more loathe to reward a cartoon than an action picture, it’s safe to say that Up isn’t a legitimate threat to the noble Na’vi.

Second, it’s a game-changer for the medium. Return of the King was something of a lifetime achievement award for the Lord of the Rings series, a recognition that the back-to-back-to-back filming schedule, advances in computer generated imagery, and the sheer scale of the endeavor needed to be rewarded. This is what led to what was arguably the weakest entry in the series winning gold at the Oscars.

Like box office success, technological advances by no means guarantee success at the Academy Awards: Who can forget Annie Hall trumping Star Wars in 1977? But Titanic certainly benefited from the lavish spectacle and impressive advances that accompanied that picture. Given the precarious state of Hollywood attendance figures, members of the Academy might lean toward rewarding a picture that ushers in a new method of getting rear ends in multiplex seats and served as the launch point for an important new era in filmmaking: The 3-D era.

Finally, and most importantly, Avatar’s politics are just right. If you look at the history of the Academy Awards, it’s not too much of a stretch to make the argument that the movie that appeals to the most liberal platitudes will take home the medal. This isn’t rightwing conspiracy mongering or whining so much as fact: Crash, American Beauty, Dances with Wolves, Titanic: Anytime you can paint white elites as boorish racists/classists/bigots – except for the one redeeming protagonist who realizes the folly of his people’s barbaric ways – you’ve seriously bolstered your Academy Award credentials.

Without belaboring the point too much, I find it hard to believe the members of the Academy will turn down the chance to award a movie that so appeals to the great triumvirate of modern liberalism: Environmentalism, the cruelty of military conflict, and the racism of Americans, past, present, and future.

None of this is to suggest that Avatar isn’t an entertaining popcorn picture – despite my problems with the story, which is just dreadful, I found it to be an engrossing piece of visual escapism. But without these three factors in its favor (especially the last), all talk of a best picture victory would be dismissed as so much nonsense.

There is a chance that Avatar could falter, but it has nothing to do with the quality of the films in competition. As Hendrik Hertzberg points out in the latest issue of The New Yorker, the bump from five best picture nominees to ten was accompanied by a shift in the voting procedures:

This scheme, known as preference voting or instant-runoff voting, doesn’t necessarily get you the movie (or the candidate) with the most committed supporters, but it does get you a winner that a majority can at least countenance. It favors consensus. … few people who have seen “The Hurt Locker”—a real Iraq War story, not a sci-fi allegory—actively dislike it, and many profoundly admire it. Its underlying ethos is that war is hell, but it does not demonize the soldiers it portrays, whose job is to defuse bombs, not drop them. Even Republicans (and there are a few in Hollywood) think it’s good. It will likely be the second or third preference of voters whose first choice is one of the other “small” films that have been nominated.

If The Hurt Locker pulls off the upset – a scenario I would certainly applaud, given that I considered it the second best picture of 2009 and my number one choice, A Serious Man, has no shot at winning – odds are it’ll be because of the accounting trickery inherent in the new system and not because a majority of voters chose it as the best picture of the year. Still, a win’s a win. Three cheers for consensus!

In that race, many people see the competition coming down to “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker,” the two movies with nine nominations each. According to the LA Times, “Over the last 20 years, the movie with the most Academy Award nominations has won best picture 15 times.” Now that “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker” have received the same number of nominations, the award could go to either without much surprise. Although “The Hurt Locker” seems to be the front-runner for critics based off high-profile previous award shows, ”Avatar” still has a lot going for it.

Firstly, the special effects in the movie are fantastic. Few can deny that the visual aspects of the film are great and stand out as one, if not the, best thing about the movie. Secondly, many film critics have enjoyed the film and many in the industry have noted their support of this film giving this movie critical backing, both inside and outside of Hollywood. The film also has a liberal message about preserving the environment at all costs that some voting members could show appreciation for by voting for it. 

Lastly, the film has been a box office success. A huge box office success. Its enormous gross could help bring more viewers to the Oscar telecast.  A lot of people watched the “Titanic” Academy Awards, so one could assume that due to the comparable popularity of “Avatar,” more viewers will tune in this year to see if it wins. Far fewer people will have seen “The Hurt Locker” by the time the Oscars air.  Although many critics believe that “The Hurt Locker” was a stronger film than “Avatar” (and I agree with that analysis), what would be the political consequences if “The Hurt Locker” beat “Avatar” in the final showdown?

If the Academy Awards broadened their scope to include ten movies this year allowing more commercial successes to be nominated, what would it say if on Oscar night if the popular movies still lost out and a small, low-grossing Iraq war movie won? It is definitely possible that the ratings for this year will spike because of “Avatar” and the interest in the best picture race. It is also very possible that all of the bigger movies will lose and “The Hurt Locker” will win the biggest race of the night.

If that happens and the Academy repeats the same experiment of having ten best picture nominees and commercial successes get nominated alongside smaller movies, will the fans of the commercial successes nominated still watch the show next year? Will they still watch even if they think that the popular movies will still lose and the smaller less-seen movies will win? Is the Academy willing to accept lower ratings in the future if “Avatar” loses?

Entertainment Weekly’s Dave Kerger compiled a list of Oscar trivia that is helpful in analyzing the box office difference between “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker”.  “If Avatar wins Best Picture, it’ll be the highest-grossing winner ever (obviously),” Kerger writes, whereas if its main competition “The Hurt Locker” wins, “it’ll be the lowest-grossing winner ever.”

 As an MSNBC piece pointed out, in 1998, a similar battle took place between a critically-acclaimed film and a blockbuster epic. That article noted that  ”Critical consensus that year strongly backed ‘L.A. Confidential,’ a movie about Hollywood itself. ‘Titanic’ still sailed off with an extraordinary 11 awards, including best picture.” So it seems like Cameron has been in this battle before and he has emerged victorious from it. Could he pull off such a victory again, partly because of “Avatar”’s commercial success?

Entertainment Weekly’s  Owen Gleiberman recently explored the idea of “The Hurt Locker” beating “Avatar” this year in a fascinating article. He wrote the following about the role of commercial success in the Oscar battle: 

The vulgar way to put it would be: Hollywood, in the end, is all about the bottom line, and so a movie that doesn’t ‘perform’ isn’t eligible, according to the industry’s core values, for the most coveted of honors…A Hurt Locker victory would open the door to a new definition of Oscar glory, a defiant celebration of artistry over commerce. A win for Avatar would be, in its way, a definitive assertion of the same old same old.

Although I liked movies like “Up” and “Up in the Air” far better than I liked “Avatar” or “The Hurt Locker,” I agree with Mr. Gleiberman. “Avatar” may have earned enough money to be the box office leader in the world but that and the other attributes of the film should not be enough to win it the best picture Oscar.

We’ll have to wait until the envelope is opened to find out if “Avatar” does win. Until then, let’s hope that the Oscar ballots are not being filled out by inhabitants of the planet Pandora.

BEST PICTURE – DRAMA

Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious
Up In the Air

BEST PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover
It’s Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE

Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
James Cameron – Avatar
Clint Eastwood – Invictus
Jason Reitman – Up In The Air
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds

BEST ACTOR - DRAMA

Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
George Clooney – Up In The Air
Colin Firth – A Single Man
Morgan Freeman – Invictus
Tobey Maguire – Brothers

BEST ACTOR – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Matt Damon – The Informant!
Daniel Day-Lewis – Nine
Robert Downey Jr. – Sherlock Holmes
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – (500) Days Of Summer
Michael Stuhlbarg – A Serious Man 

BEST ACTRESS  – DRAMA

Emily Blunt – The Young Victoria
Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side
Helen Mirren – The Last Station
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Gabourey Sibide – Precious

 BEST ACTRESS – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Sandra Bullock – The Proposal
Marion Cotillard – Nine
Julia Roberts – Duplicity
Meryl Streep – It’s Complicated
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia

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 SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Penélope Cruz – Nine
Vera Farmiga – Up In The Air
Anna Kendrick – Up In The Air
Mo’nique – Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire
Julianne Moore – A Single Man

BEST ANIMATED FILM

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess And The Frog
Up

FULL LIST CAN BE FOUND HERE

But who does the snob Sheridan choose to blame in advance should his war-themed film flop? Not his own bonehead decision to jump into a genre with a 100% failure rate, not the investors who dove in with him … no, he blames We The American People: 

Midway through a conversation with director Jim Sheridan about his latest film, “Brothers,” he abruptly asks, “Do you think anybody will go see this movie?”

I say what I think he wants to hear – that a cast led by Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal is sure to draw people. But we both know that movies that so much as touch on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned out to be tough sells. …

“I think the American people just don’t think there is a war on, so why should they have to go to a movie about something that doesn’t exist? Their state of denial is hard to overcome,” Sheridan said.

Unbelievable.

The Leftist Hollywood Playbook:

1. Make movie no one wants to see.
2. Insult audience prior to flop.
3. Blame audience after flop.
4. Receive ”brave” tag by fawning entertainment media.
5. Position on Hollywood cocktail party circuit remains firmly in place.

But as is always the case with a Hollywoodist, you can take Sheridan at his word and still come to the same conclusion: If you’re a director who wants to make a profit – a film people will want to see — and you believe Americans are in denial over the war — why spend $25 million on a war-themed film?

Predicting what will hit and miss at the box office is a fool’s game. Maybe “Brothers” will be the genre’s outlier, who knows. But how tired and played does this description from the original Danish version of “Brothers” sound:

Then Michael comes home with a full-blown case of post-traumatic stress disorder…

The trailer tells the rest of the story.

Am I the only one who eagerly awaits the $25 million film — a serious drama like “Brothers” – where the screwed-up brother returns from a tour of duty transformed into a responsible, resourceful and mature man ready to take his place in the world? That would not only be an inspiring and more accurate story worthy of the brave men and women who serve our country … it would finally be a fresh idea from an industry drowning in their own leftist cliches.