The 82nd Annual Academy Awards | 2010 (honoring movies released in 2009)

Best Picture: The Hurt Locker: Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro, Producers. The Hurt Locker also won Academy Awards for Directing (Kathryn Bigelow), Film Editing (Bob Murawski and Chris Innis), Sound Editing (Paul N. J. Ottosson), Sound Mixing (Paul N. J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett), and Writing – Original Screenplay (Mark Boal). Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for directing. Barbra Streisand presented the award to Bigelow. Photo © Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The full live telecast of the Oscar gala on Sunday, 7 March 2010 in Finland by Nelonen (Channel Four of Finland), recorded on our digital tv box late at night / early in the morning in the Finnish timezone. Because the live telecast ran late of schedule, the sender cut it before closing credits. We watched it at home in Helsinki on Easter Sunday, 4 April 2010.

As an aficionado of the musical I love Oscar gala shows. I failed to see last year's show because of a malfunction in the digital box. Now I was able to see the show but was a bit disappointed with the changes which may have taken place already earlier but which I first now became aware of. There seemed to be fewer lavish musical production numbers and less montage sequences. There seemed to be less emphasis on technical achievements.

From the Academy's website I learn that there was a special Sci-Tech Awards (Scientific & Technical Awards Winners) reception on 20 February 2010: http://www.oscars.org/awards/scitech/winners.html

The lifetime awards are now called the Governor's Awards, and there were four of them: to Lauren Bacall, John Calley, Roger Corman, and Gordon Willis. The reception took place on 14 November 2009: http://www.oscars.org/awards/governors/index.html

Memorable in this year's show:
1. Steven Martin and Alec Baldwin, the lovers of Meryl Streep in the movie It's Complicated, were great as the hosts.
2. There were now ten candidates for the best picture, and among the presentations there was a choreographical performance of all of them.
3. John Hughes in memoriam with Matthew Broderick, Jon Cryer, Macaulay Culkin, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy together on the stage.
4. The candidates for the best actresses and the best actors were presented by memorable co-stars of theirs (Jeff Bridges by Michelle Pfeiffer, Helen Mirren by Michael Sheen...).