Oscar Stars Dazzle Despite Showers

Cameron vs. Bigelow, Streep vs. Bullock, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin
By Caroline Miller,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 7, 2010 6:56 PM CST
Oscar Stars Dazzle Despite Showers
James Cameron, right, and Suzy Amis arrive during the 82nd Academy Awards Sunday, March 7, 2010, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.    (Matt Sayles)

Intermittent downpours pounded the tent over the red carpet at the Kodak Theater tonight, as stars gathered for the first Academy Awards with 10 best-picture nominees since 1943. Voters are expected to go very big or very small on their best-picture winner, with the two favorites the as-big-as-it-gets blockbuster Avatar and the critical darling The Hurt Locker, which drew a tiny fraction of the audience its mammoth competitor pulled in.

Either movie would represent a first at the Oscars. James Cameron's Avatar would be the only science-fiction film ever to take home the best-picture prize. While war films have done well at the Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker would be the first winner centered on the war on terror, a subject that has stirred little interest among movie audiences, notes the AP. The other eight films competing for best picture: the football drama The Blind Side, the sci-fi thriller District 9, the British teen tale An Education, the World War II saga Inglourious Basterds, the Harlem story Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, the Jewish domestic chronicle A Serious Man, the animated adventure Up, and the recession-era yarn Up in the Air. (More Academy Awards stories.)

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