Little joy for Jewish stars and films at Oscars
JEWISH films and filmmakers were largely overlooked at the 2010 Academy Awards, with frontrunners Inglourious Basterds and Up In The Air taking home just one Oscar between them.
ADAM KAMIEN
JEWISH films and filmmakers were largely overlooked at the 2010 Academy Awards, with frontrunners Inglourious Basterds and Up In The Air taking home just one Oscar from 14 nominations between them.
The night was billed as a shootout between James Cameron’s Avatar — the highest grossing film of all time — and Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War action film Hurt Locker. But Cameron’s epic was taken to the cleaners by his ex-wife as Bigelow became the first female director to win the Best Director award.
It was one of six wins for the hit movie, including Best Film and Best Original Screenplay. Avatar managed just three awards, with no wins in any of the major categories.
Austrian actor Christoph Waltz took out the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as the “Jew Hunter” Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds, but it was the only win from eight nominations for the film about a group of Jewish soldiers who brutalise Nazis in occupied France.
It was a red-letter night for Jewish producer Fisher Stevens, whose film The Cove won in the Best Documentary Feature category. The film exposed the wholesale slaughter of dolphins at a Japanese cove in Taiji.
Jason Reitman’s Up In The Air failed to pick up a single award despite being nominated in six categories.
Star Trek, directed by Jewish filmmaker JJ Abrams, managed just one win from four nominations, taking out the Oscar for Best Makeup.
Israeli hopefuls were also snubbed, with Oren Moverman missing out on the Best Screenplay award for his film The Messenger, while Israeli film Ajami missed out in the Best Foreign Language category.
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