Tag: kathryn bigelow

Categories
Amusing Awards Season Images

The Oscars in one image

[ad]

If there is one image that sums up this year’s Oscar race, it is this hilarious shot of Avatar director James Cameron and The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow from last night’s ceremony.

They were once married, but contrary to a lot of lazy media coverage in the build up to the awards, remain friends and even consult each other on their respective film projects.

Cameron urged his ex-wife to do The Hurt Locker after reading the script and even screened Avatar for Bigelow several times in post production to solicit her opinion on the sci-fi blockbuster.

Also, both films were – in their different ways – about the Iraq War as Cameron pointed out in an interview with CBS recently.

Someone has also done a nice Muckety map of the connections between the two directors.


In a way, it all worked out nicely as Avatar scooped the technical awards it deserved, as well as becoming the biggest grossing film of all time.

Meanwhile The Hurt Locker went from a film that almost no major studio wanted to make or release to a  Best Picture winner that also made Bigelow the first woman to get a Best Director Oscar.

Categories
Awards Season News

Kathryn Bigelow wins the DGA Award

[ad]

Kathryn Bigelow won the DGA award last night for directing The Hurt Locker and became the first woman ever to scoop the honour.

Bigelow beat out fellow nominees Lee Daniels (Precious), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) and James Cameron (Avatar).

Some pundits favoured Cameron after his win at the Golden Globes and Avatar’s extraordinary box office success, which recently passed Titanic to become the highest grossing film of all time.

However, The Hurt Locker has been the most acclaimed film of the awards season, winning most of the critics and guild awards that pave the way to the Oscars next month.

Bigelow’s victory is her 15th award for her work on the film which examines the experiences of a bomb disposal unit in the Iraq War.

She is now the frontrunner for the Best Director Oscar, which the DGA has correctly predicted for 56 of its 62-year history.

We should also mention that her directorial team were:

  • Unit Production Manager: Tony Mark
  • First Assistant Director: David Ticotin
  • First Assistant Director (Canadian Unit): Lee Cleary

* Have a listen to our interview with Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal about The Hurt Locker *

[ad]

Categories
Cinema Interviews Podcast

Interview: Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal on The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker poster

The Hurt Locker is a new film which tells the story of a United States Army bomb squad in Baghdad during the Iraq War during 2004.

The script was written by Mark Boal, based on his experiences as a embedded journalist in Iraq and directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

It stars Jeremy Renner as the team leader of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit and Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty as the troops assigned to cover him whilst he defuses the bombs that litter the city.

Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce and David Morse all feature in key supporting roles and the film was shot by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who also worked on United 93 and various Ken Loach films over the years.

After premièring at the Venice film festival last September the film has achieved enormous critical acclaim and is a likely contender at the Oscars next year.

I recently spoke to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal in London about the film and you can listen to the interview here:

[audio:http://filmdetail.receptionmedia.com/Kathryn_Bigelow_and_Mark_Boal_on_The_Hurt_Locker.mp3]

You can download this interview as a podcast via iTunes by clicking here

The Hurt Locker is out at UK cinemas from Friday 28th August

> Download this interview as an MP3 by clicking here
> Official UK site for The Hurt Locker
> Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal at the IMDb
> Read more reviews of The Hurt Locker at Metacritic
> Find out more about the Iraq War at Wikipedia