Do you think that The Hurt Locker's Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director at the Oscars just because she is a female?

I haven’t seen it but I’m pretty sure any movie should get the Oscar over Avatar.

It is a great film and she did a fantastic job directing! Brilliant job in fact! Fair and Square!

If that was the case, then the landscape would be littered with Female Best Directors. Instead, there had never been one.

Oh no. I think she just slept around.

That’s how all the guys got theirs.

No. And she is not the first female to be nominated for Best Director. Check your facts before you open your mouth.

@MacBean Sorry… that’s what they said during the Oscars program.

I think she won it because it was the best movie nominated and she proved herself, convincingly, to be the best director

You know, I don’t care why she won it. I’m just glad it wasn’t Avatar.

I would imagine the opposite is true. I haven’t seen the movie but she probably had to work twice as hard as any male director to get best director.

I’m not trying to be sexist, honest, it just seems that women often have to work twice as hard to get the same amount of recognition.

I would like to think that she got the oscar because of the fact that she’s an amazing director that made an amazing movie. The fact that she’s female (and a very attractive one) only affected the way she looked on the red carpet.

Off the top of my head, I believe Lina Wertmuller was nominated for Seven Beauties, and Jane Campion was nominated for The Piano. I think there was one other.
Bigelow was the first female winner.

Regarding The Hurt Locker, I haven’t seen Up In The Air, but I did see the others, and The Hurt Locker was the best directed film.

@filmfann You are correct, sir. The third female nominee before Bigelow was Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation.

No. The only reason that film won any awards is because it dealt with the Iraq War. It was a lousy movie, and the direction was just as bad as the acting.

@filmfann And Prince of Tides was nominated for Best Picture but Barbra Streisand was passed over for a Director’s nomination. The film must have directed itself.

No. I think she won because she made a very good movie and didn’t neet a half a billion dollars worth of special effects to do it. Not to take anything away from James Cameron’s genius, but the award is for being the Best Director, not the best funded Director.

It seems to me that the bottom line on this question is that, the Academy has been stubbornly refusing to, or just barely, or just occasionally nominating women for Best Director and never, ever, until this year, awarding a women Best Director, for a very, very long time. And since Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman in the history of the Academy Awards to win for Best Director, it just seem very, very unlikely that she won merely because she is a woman. If they wanted to toss out a token award to a woman they could have done it long ago and moved on.

I think it was a make-up oscar for over looking her for Point Break.

@Seth Sorry for snapping at you. I was very cranky earlier, and it leaked into my Fluthering. :(

@lillycoyote When it comes to directing movies, Barbra is a great singer.

@filmfann: lol4rl. I wish I could give you more than one GA for that.

@MacBean No prob. It’s fine. ;)

Not at all, the movie was excellent in itself.