| 82nd Academy Awards | |
|---|---|
 Official poster | |
| Date | March 7, 2010 |
| Site | Kodak Theatre Hollywood,Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Hosted by | Alec Baldwin Steve Martin[1] |
| Preshow hosts | Jess Cagle Kathy Ireland Sherri Shepherd[2] |
| Produced by | Bill Mechanic Adam Shankman[3] |
| Directed by | Hamish Hamilton[4] |
| Highlights | |
| Best Picture | The Hurt Locker |
| Most awards | The Hurt Locker (6) |
| Most nominations | Avatar andThe Hurt Locker (9) |
| TV in the United States | |
| Network | ABC |
| Duration | 3 hours, 37 minutes[5] |
| Ratings | 41.62 million 24.89% (Nielsen ratings)[6] |
The82nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the bestfilms of 2009 and took place on March 7, 2010, at theKodak Theatre inHollywood, Los Angeles, beginning at 5:30 p.m.PST / 8:30 p.m.EST. The ceremony was scheduled after its usual late-February date to avoid conflicting with the2010 Winter Olympics.[7] During the ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presentedAcademy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories. The ceremony was televised in the United States byABC, and was produced byBill Mechanic andAdam Shankman and directed byHamish Hamilton. ActorsAlec Baldwin andSteve Martin hosted the show. Martin hosted for the third time; he first presided over the73rd ceremony held in 2001 and last hosted the75th ceremony held in 2003, while this was Baldwin's first Oscars hosting stint. This was also the first telecast to have multiple hosts since the59th ceremony held in 1987.[8]
On June 24, 2009, Academy presidentSid Ganis announced at a press conference that, in an attempt to revitalize interest surrounding the awards, the 2010 ceremony would feature tenBest Picture nominees instead of five,[9] a practice that had been discontinued after the16th ceremony in 1944. On February 20, 2010, in a ceremony at theBeverly Wilshire Hotel inBeverly Hills, California, theAcademy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by hostElizabeth Banks.[10]
The Hurt Locker won six awards, includingBest Picture.[11][12] Other winners wereAvatar with three awards,Crazy Heart,Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, andUp with two, andThe Blind Side,The Cove,Inglourious Basterds,Logorama,Music by Prudence,The New Tenants,The Secret in Their Eyes,Star Trek, andThe Young Victoria with one. The telecast garnered nearly 42 million viewers in the United States, making it the most watched Oscar telecast since the77th Academy Awards in 2005.
The nominees for the 82nd Academy Awards were announced on February 2, 2010, at 5:38 a.m.PST (13:38UTC) at theSamuel Goldwyn Theater inBeverly Hills, California, byTom Sherak, president of the Academy, and actressAnne Hathaway.[13]Avatar andThe Hurt Locker led the nominations with nine each.[14]
The winners were announced during the awards ceremony on March 7, 2010.[15][16][17]Kathryn Bigelow made history as the first female to win the Academy Award for Best Director.[18]Up became the second animated film to be nominated for Best Picture after 1991'sBeauty and the Beast.[14] Best Adapted Screenplay winnerGeoffrey Fletcher was the first African-American winner of a screenwriting Oscar.[19]
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Winners are listed first, highlighted inboldface and indicated with a double dagger (‡).[20]
The Academy held its 1st AnnualGovernors Awards ceremony on November 14, 2009, during which the following awards were presented:[21][22][23]
The following 22 films received multiple nominations: | The following five films received multiple awards:
|
The following individuals, listed in order of appearance, presented awards or performed musical numbers.[24]
| Name(s) | Role | Performed |
|---|---|---|
| Marc Shaiman Harold Wheeler | Musical arrangers | Orchestral |
| Neil Patrick Harris | Performer | Opening number |
| James Taylor | Performer | "In My Life" during the annualIn Memoriam tribute |
| Legion of Extraordinary Dancers | Performers | Performed dance number synchronized with selections from Best Original Score nominees |
Because of the declining viewership of recent Academy Awards ceremonies, the Academy sought ideas to revamp the show while renewing interest with the nominated films. After theprevious year's telecast, which saw a 13% increase in viewership, many within the Motion Picture Academy proposed new ways to give the awards a more populist appeal. AMPAS then-presidentSid Ganis announced that the ceremony would feature ten Best Picture nominees, rather than traditional five. The expansion was a throwback to the Academy's early years in the1930s and1940s, when eight to twelve films were nominated.[25] "Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize," Sid Ganis said in a press conference.[9] "I can't wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February."[9] Ganis also said that became difficult to get a clear winner. A cause of this was required a change in the voting system fromfirst-past-the-post toalternative vote.[26]
ChoreographerAdam Shankman andBill Mechanic were hired as producers for the ceremony. Shankman revealed in an interview onNPR'sFresh Air that he and Mechanic had originally chosenSacha Baron Cohen as the host, but the Academy rejected this proposal because Baron Cohen was "too much of a wild card."[27]
Many of the previous year's well-received elements returned. Five actors with a personal connection with each of the nominees presented the Best Actor and Best Actress awards. Shankman and Mechanic announced their intention to make the running time of the telecast shorter.[28] Most presenters this year introduced each winner with the phrase "And the winner is ..." rather than "And the Oscar goes to..." for the first time since 1988. The Academy gave no reason for the change to a phrase which it had once felt humiliating to the other nominees; but apparently acquiesced in Shankman and Mechanic's decision to return to the older phrase.[29] David Rockwell's proscenium curtain, decorated with 100,000Swarovski crystals, was reused as part of the stage design for this year's telecast.[30] Unlike most Oscar ceremonies, however, Mechanic and Shankman announced that none of the five songs nominated for Best Original Song would be performed live.[31]
For the first time since 2003, the field of major nominees included at least oneblockbuster at the American and Canadianbox offices. Five of the nominees had grossed over $100 million before the nominations were announced.[32] Many critics, reporters, and entertainment industry analysts cite the AMPAS's decision to expand the roster of Best Picture nominees from five to ten films as one of the reasons for this.[32][33]
Three of the ten Best Picture nominees were among the top ten releases in box office during the nominations. At the time of the announcement on February 2,Avatar was the highest-grossing film among the Best Picture nominees with $596 million in domestic box office receipts.[32] Other top-ten domestic box office hits nominated wereUp with $293 million, andThe Blind Side with $237.9 million.[32] Among the remaining seven nominees,Inglourious Basterds was the next highest-grossing film with $120.5 million followed byDistrict 9 ($115.6 million),Up in the Air ($73 million),Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire ($45 million),The Hurt Locker ($12 million),An Education ($9.4 million) and finallyA Serious Man ($9.2 million).[34]
Of the top 50 grossing films of the year, 46 nominations went to 13 films on the list. OnlyAvatar (1st),Up (5th),The Blind Side (8th),Inglourious Basterds (25th),District 9 (27th),The Princess and the Frog (32nd),Julie & Julia (34th),Coraline (42nd) andUp in the Air (43rd) were nominated for directing, acting, screenwriting, Best Picture or Animated Feature.[35] The other top-50 box office hits that earned nominations wereHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2nd),Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (3rd),Star Trek (7th) andSherlock Holmes (11th).[35]
On March 1, 2010,WABC-TVNew York, ABC's flagship station, announced that it would likely end its services with cable television companyCablevision on March 7, 2010,[36] the weekend of the 82nd Academy Awards. The station was removed from Cablevision's lineup at 12:01 a.m. ET on March 7.[37][38][39] Over 3.1 million viewers in the New York City viewing area, the nation's largest media market, would have been unable to watch the Oscars (and other station-related and ABC-related programming), and it was projected to cause a devastating blow to advertisers and viewership for the Oscars.[40] At about 8:43 p.m. ET, thirteen minutes after the awards ceremony began, Cablevision resumed transmission of the WABC feed.[38][41][42]
Shortly afterMusic by Prudence directorRoger Ross Williams began his speech accepting the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject, he was suddenly interrupted byElinor Burkett, his co-producer. The scene was described as the ceremony's weirdest or most awkward moment, and was compared by Williams and others toKanye West'sinterruption ofTaylor Swift's acceptance of the Best Female Video Award at the2009 MTV Video Music Awards five months earlier.[43]
Burkett, who lives inZimbabwe where most of the film was shot, had sued Williams over the finished film, a suit that had been settled by the time of the ceremony. She explained toSalon.com, to which she was once a contributor, that the film had been her idea. "Roger had never even heard of Zimbabwe before I told him about this." She had been upset that Williams andHBO chose to focus on one person instead of the entire band, as the members had been led to believe. "I felt my role in this has been denigrated again and again, and it wasn't going to happen this time." She hustled onstage because, she claimed, Williams' mother had blocked her from going down with her cane to prevent her from sharing the stage.[44]
"She just ambushed me", said Williams, "I just expected her to stand there. I had a speech prepared." He said it was made clear by the Academy that only one person can give an acceptance speech. He said his mother had merely gotten up to hug him.[44]
The show received a mixed reception from media publications. Some media outlets were more critical of the show. Film criticRoger Ebert criticized the opening monologue of Baldwin and Martin saying it was "surprisingly unfunny". He later went on to say that there was joy thatThe Hurt Locker won, but choice of Baldwin and Martin as host was wrong.[45]Los Angeles Times columnist Mary McNamara quipped that the show had no sense of timing saying, "Despite everyone's best efforts, this year's Oscars seemed to suffer from a crisis of confidence."[46]Time television criticJames Poniewozik also criticized "the choppy paced" ceremony stating, it was "a classic Oscar failing". He also noted that having two hosts was a disadvantage.[47]
Other media outlets received the broadcast more positively.The Boston Globe television critic Matthew Gilbert lauded the hosts performance saying that "The delivery was expert and warmly conversational, like one of those old-school comedy teams."[48]Hank Stuever ofThe Washington Post remarked that the telecast "moved along with precision and smart decisions." He also praised Baldwin and Martin writing that they "proved to be classy and quippy throughout the night."[49] Maureen Ryan of theChicago Tribune gave an average critique of the ceremony but acclaimed the cast.[50]
The American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 41.62 million people over its length, which was a 13% increase from the previous year's ceremony.[6] An estimated 79.68 million total viewers watched all or part of the awards.[51] The show also drew higherNielsen ratings compared to the two previous ceremonies with 24.89% of households watching over a 36.69 share.[52] In addition, the program scored a higher 18-49 demo rating with a 12.71 rating over a 31.51 share among viewers in that demographic.[53] It was the highest viewership for an Academy Award telecast since the77th ceremony held in 2005.[54][55]
In July 2010, the ceremony presentation received 12 nominations at the62nd Primetime Emmys.[56] The following month, the ceremony won one of those nominations forOutstanding Art Direction for Variety, Music or Nonfiction Programming (David Rockwell and Joe Celli).[57]
The annualIn Memoriam tribute, produced byChuck Workman,[58] was presented by actressDemi Moore. SingerJames Taylor performedThe Beatles' song "In My Life" during the tribute.[59]
A separate tribute was held earlier in the evening for the late filmmakerJohn Hughes, presented by actorsMatthew Broderick,Molly Ringwald,Judd Nelson,Ally Sheedy,Anthony Michael Hall,Macaulay Culkin andJon Cryer.[17][60][61] The77th telecast had previously featured a special memorial toJohnny Carson presented byChris Rock andWhoopi Goldberg.[62]
