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In the Hollywood battle of David versus Goliath at last night’s Academy Awards, the low budget The Hurt Locker upstaged Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time, to win Best Picture. The film about bomb defusers in Iraq scored five awards in total: Kathryn Bigelow shattered the Oscars’ glass ceiling by becoming the first woman to ever win Best Director, while Rolling Stone contributor Mark Boal scored his first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. For the full list of winners, check out the Oscar site.
Look back at Peter Travers’ Best Movies of 2009.
On the music front, as expected, Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett’s “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart won Best Song, a much-deserved honor for Burnett after previously being nominated in the category for Cold Mountain’s “Scarlet Tide.” One of the soundtracks overseen by Burnett — O Brother, Where Are Thou? — had gone on to win a Grammy for Album of the Year, but Oscar gold had eluded him until last night. Crazy Heart’s Jeff Bridges also took home the Best Actor Oscar, marking the first time the man who played “the Dude” was honored by the Academy. For more on Bridges and the music of Crazy Heart, check out:
• Exclusive Video of Bridges’ Recent Rolling Stone Photo Shoot
• Behind the Music That Feeds Crazy Heart
• Maggie Gyllenhaal on Working With Bridges
• The Decade of the Dude: Behind the Power of The Big Lebowki
Though producers of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards announced that this year’s Best Song nominees would not be performing at the ceremony, the show did have a few musical moments. Actor Neil Patrick Harris made perhaps the first Harold and Kumar joke in the history of Oscar in his comedic opening number before ha...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily