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Great win, but since the film is almost entirely devoid of women (there’s a token wife glimpsed near the end) lets not pretend this is some kind of sexual revolution in Holywood.

Bigellow’s a macho director, from the leather-boy biker movie The Loveless to the buddy movie Point Break and the Millennial Strange Days (attacked by feminists at the time for alleged misogyny).

She’s a better action director than her ex-partner James Cameron but her films center on addiction (to speed, to blood, to technology or adrenalin) rather than gender.

Although I’m glad that woman director got an oscar ,and I do not belive it is only because she is a woman, to me it was surprising that james cameron got only 3 statues with all the media attention

It has imo made some weird awards that look a lot like tokenism / compensation over the years though.

One of the reasons I loved the Hurt Locker (beyond the obvious – that it’s a great film, wraught with fear and tension, etc) is that I was informed by one of those SWP scrotey types (you know the type: low self esteem, desperately envious of Jon Rees’s shaggability) that I’d love it’s anti-war message.

As it turned out I loved it, despite knowing full well the political opinions of the team behind it, precisely because it wasn’t just another dull “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE OYUL, DUH!” snorefests that even us Bush-Derangement-Syndrome cheese-eating Yuropeans avoided in our droves…

Beautiful film, hideous ending. But not patronising in the slightest and one of the best war films I’ve ever seen. Sure, it has an anti-war message in a way. But it inspires debate about the war in a way that no other film about Iraq has done thus far (George Clooney et al take note), mainly because it doesn’t spell things out in great big capital letters. Regardless of your take on the events in Mesopotamia over the past decade or so, that has to be A GOOD THING.

Am quite intrigued to see Michael Moore’s latest on the back of this, as I’m fairly certain it will seem hideously dated and partisan in comparison, with most of the debate surrounding him and his tendency to bend facts to suit his argument (his overegging the NHS in Sicko being a fine point) rather than the subject matter at hand. We shall see…

Avatar was a great spectacle and will probably be remembered more in fifty years time. But deep down The Hurt Locker was the better film – better script, acting and so on. Of course, it didn’t hinder it’s chances of winning the Oscar by having a woman as director. The Academy loves to break new ground, and of course James Cameron is the most popular guy in Hollywood (despite the money his films make).

The Hurt Locker, the biggest winner of 82nd Oscar, lands 9 nominations and finally wins 6! That’s glorious and will watch it first before any personal comments.

I say this as a fan of films (including Hollywood films) – who gives a crap who won at this glossed up excuse for a party and publicity?

I liked ‘The Hurt Locker’ because – just for once – it portrayed troops at the front-line in Iraq not as naive little lambs conned by King Dubya, or as mass-murderers and rapists, but as ordinary people in an extraordinary situation.

Some scenes were quite frankly bollocks (Jeremy Renners’ Sergeant nips over the wire of his FOB and slips into Baghdad unobtrusively – yeah, right), but if there was an anti-war message it was a subtle one, and it also showed the barbarity of the people the stoppers call ‘the resistance’ (proxy bombings, IEDs hidden in corpses etc). It also captured the tension of operating in a COIN environment, in a situation where the switch between normal everyday life and a contact can happen in milliseconds.

Above all, I liked the fact that the three leads were relative unknowns. The cameos by Guy Pearce, David Morse and Ralph Fiennes were good, but the lead actors carried the film.

Oscars well deserved. I wish our film-makers would make a UK-centric version.

rather than for the merits of their respective work, how could one judge that a sign of progress?
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I’m glad Hurt Locker won. I always like when the under dog wins. I thought Avatar was going to win so I was very surprised.

A point well made. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your background is or what your gender is. Successful individuals should be recognized for their work and how successful it became and not because of the aforementioned traits. However, I believe that there is some recognition that should be made regarding those things, but they shouldn’t have made it sound as though that was the reason they won their awards.

I don’t think that her being a woman play a role in her getting the award. If it was directed by any other person it would still be a good movie. I think that people say things like that to justify their personal choice not winning.

Avatar was a great spectacle and will probably be remembered more in fifty years time. But deep down The Hurt Locker was the better film