4. Inglourious Basterds Wins Only One Oscar
2010 saw the PGA and DGA awards going to the overrated film The Hurt Locker, so by this time, we already knew which film was more than likely going to be taking home the Best Picture Oscar on the big night. It was a somewhat special night as we also knew that there was a great chance we would be seeing the first woman win the Oscar for Best Director, but what I and many others were hoping to see was Quentin Taratino take his much-deserved Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his brilliant script to Inglourious Basterds.
It’s an award he had won in several places throughout awards season, including wins from the BFCA and the OFCS (it was “disqualified” from the WGA awards). However, that night it was like a punch to the gut when they announced The Hurt Locker had won the award. A bland, forgettable script with little substance had somehow beaten one of the sharpest-written scripts in the last decade. The explanation for this was pretty clear: They thought The Hurt Locker was the better film, so they felt the need to justify it by giving it a screenplay award as well (similar to what happened with Argo).
To make matters worse, Inglourious Basterds was shot down for all but one of its eight nominations, receiving Best Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz’s amazing performance. We already knew Picture and Director were pretty much out of the mix, but to swipe Film Editing and Cinematography from it as well is just inexplicable, especially when you see that Film Editing went to The Hurt Locker and Cinematography went to Avatar. When the latter happened, I was expecting them to roll a computer on stage to accept the award (as well as when it inexplicably won Best Art Direction) as it was basically an insult to the other nominees.
Now don’t get me wrong, The Hurt Locker is an ok film, but I’ve never had the urge to watch it a second time. It’s simply not in the same league as Inglourious Basterds, a film that had more suspense in its first scene (check out a clip from it below) than Hurt Locker had throughout its entire runtime. That night should have seen a sweep for Tarantino’s masterpiece, but as the Academy often does, they chose a film that becomes forgotten by the time the next Oscars roll around. While Basterds is still discussed to this day for its incredible dialogue and thrilling plot, Hurt Locker has faded away, merely to be mentioned as a footnote for the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar.
