Kathryn Bigelow won the best picture and director Oscars this year for The Hurt Locker (***1/2). I enjoyed the movie, though it didn’t quite make my “best of the year” list.

I’m still thrilled she won — she’s been one of my favorite directors for years, since a vampire romance in the mid ’80s:  Near Dark. (It’s kind of Romeo and Juliet, except the Montagues are all undead.)

She also did one of my favorite movies, Strange Days. That one isn’t generally highly regarded, but it, like The Hurt Locker, is a character study, and not a genre movie (science fiction in the case of Strange Days, war movie in the case of The Hurt Locker).  Fools people, I think.  Also, it gave me a crush on Angela Bassett.  She also did the surprisingly enjoyable Point Break and the adequate K-19: The Widowmaker.

It might seem odd that she gets to be one of my favorite directors with so few movies, but one can say the same about James Cameron, Peter Jackson, or Quentin Tarantino.

While The Hurt Locker didn’t make my list, it’s pretty much just as deserving (or more) than the ones I picked, which are not the best films, but my favorites.

Triangle is promoted as a horror flick, and it didn’t even get a US theatrical release, dooming it to obscurity.  The poster implies a terrifying thrill ride.

There’s a crazy with a bloody axe on the cover, for heaven’s sake.  Everything says, “cheap slasher flick.”

This is miserable marketing in the highest degree.

Admittedly, cheap slasher flicks do more box office than Triangle did, so I can see how they might have thought pretending that’s what it was might have sold some tickets.

Alas, it fails miserably to deliver the terror and gore. This is only a bad thing if that’s what you’re looking for. If you’d rather have a thoughtful, somewhat eggheaded mystery, you’re in luck.

Admittedly, people who like movies that make you think are in limited supply.  But hey, I’m one of them, so I dug it.

I’m not going to ruin the story.  Some people suffer misfortune on a sailing trip, and end up having a miserable time.  This is no gore-fest, but it’s got some violence, and is probably too complicated for kids, even if they’re as desensitized to blood as mine are.

Anyway, pleasant surprise.  I think the most underappreciated movie of 2009.

I still haven’t seen every good movie from 2009 — some haven’t come out on DVD, and some I just haven’t gotten around to.

The IMDB got rid of their PowerSearch feature, which let me trivially make a list of every movie from any year or group of years, and sort them by how much I liiked them, and so forth.  Sigh.  I still rate most every movie I see, and they keep the data, so it’s still useful.  Their new Advanced Title Search is much less useful to me if I can’t weed out all the movies I’ve already seen, though.

Anyway, my big three movies:

• Avatar. Yeah, the storyline is kind of commercial and gutless, but it works, and the visuals are breathtaking, and I dig that in movies.
• District 9. Also a visual treat, despite its (relatively) minimal budget of $30 million.  Thought provoking, and great character development.
• Up. Another great Pixar flick.  The trailers for this made it look like Disney crap, but it exceeded my expectations.

More movies I loved:

• (500) Days of Summer
• Coraline
• Inglorious Basterds
• The Hangover
• Triangle
• Watchmen

Triangle is the obscure one in that list.  Maybe I’ll do a review of it tomorrow.

Sensational.  I didn’t see it in 3D, because I have weird eyesight and don’t have stereo vision.  My hunch is that makes it even more sensational.

I tried to fail to suspend my disbelief, but I never doubted the reality of the world.

Why can’t the Coen brothers come up with an ending for their movies any more?  No Country for Old Men (****) and Burn After Reading (****) were both delightful films, but both just kind of stopped.  (I found it more tolerable in Burn After Reading.)

Sure, they’re good movies anyway, but I want them to be great movies.

I have a soft spot for zero budget movies.  Paranormal Activity, with a budget of $11,000, definitely qualifies.  (That’s way less than, say, The Blair Witch Project.)

And this is definitely reminiscent of Blair Witch — a shaky camera scary movie.  But the actors are likeable, and the mood and tension build nicely.  And no gore or sex.

Pleasing.

Here’s a thing I wrote in 1990, and used to put in all our manuals:

Our Stand on Copy-Protection
We at Delta Tao think that copy-protection is an evil thing that could damage the growth of the software industry and the computer industry as a whole. We hope you’ll boycott all copy-protected products. Here’s why.

We believe people have a certain amount of money to spend on software. After they blow their software budget, they still want more software. If copy-protection is preeminent, they are out of luck. The software they buy is the only software they have. They find their Macintosh less useful, and don’t encourage their friends to buy one. The hardware and software industries dwindle and die.

On the other hand, if things aren’t copy-protected, people pirate software once they’ve blown their software budget. They learn what programs are good and useful first hand. The next year they will make informed decisions about what software to purchase. In the meantime, they find their computer more useful and friendly. They recommend it to their friends, who go on to become software purchasers.

There are two problems. Number one, in a world where some programs are copy-protected and others aren’t, people may buy copy-protected software (since that’s the only way they can get it) and pirate the unprotected software. This rewards the businesses who are damaging the industry, and punishes those who help it along.

Number two, publishers without copy-protection can’t sell bad software with massive advertising. Since people tend to try software before they purchase it, companies only sell their products to people who find it useful. This means companies with inferior products, but big budgets, should like copy-protection.

We don’t mind problem number two so much, but the first problem scares us. The solution: boycott copy protection. Make sure it isn’t profitable to copy-protect software.

Before the Software Publisher’s Association has us lynched (they claim that “billions of dollars of revenue are lost every year to piracy”) we’ll invent at least a little bit of evidence for our theory. Remember back when the cassette tape was invented? People could now copy records indiscriminately, and there was nothing the record company could do about it. “We’re doomed!” they shouted. “Now we’ll only sell one of each record!” What really happened? The music industry took off to previously unimaginable levels, generating more profits for more artists than ever before.

When VCRs were first available, people could copy movies indiscriminately, and there was little the movie companies could do about it. “We’re doomed!” they cried. “Now we’ll never sell another movie!” What happened? The movie industry took off to previously unimaginable levels, generating more profits for more people than ever before.

Pay for software based on its quality, not its advertising, packaging, and copy protection.

I finally got Snow Leopard installed (after some problem with my old hard drive not being GUID partitioned, whatever that means).  Not many changes, as expected, though it does feel slightly quicker overall, which is good.  Memory use doesn’t seem improved, alas.

Anyway, there’s a new Quicktime Player, version 10.  The last version was version 7, so I don’t know what the heck happened to 8 and 9.  I imagine they were afraid people would associate it with OS 8 or 9, somehow, and think things were going backwards.

Alas, things are going backwards.  At least, my favorite feature of the old Quicktime Player is gone.  I use it to watch movies, and I often used the A/V Controls window to change the playback speed, usually bumping it 10%-20% — but for a really bad movie, boosting it to double or triple speed, and generally making it more palatable.

That entire handy window, and its extensive functionality, is lost. Poo!  I suspect I’ll be dredging up an old copy of Quicktime Player and replacing the new one, because I used that feature far more than I will the new feature that allows one to trim movies.  (I use iMovie for that.)

The best thing about the second most recent James Bond movie was the parkour chase scene from the teaser. The black guy Bond is pursuing, Sebastien Foucan, is a delight to watch.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is all about parkour as a game.  And undo via time travel.  (Great game, by the way.)

Anyway, I was just reminded of that by this robot parkour video.

Quentin Tarentino has an amazing reputation for someone who has directed so few films:

• Reservoir Dogs (***1/2)
• Pulp Fiction (****)
• Jackie Brown (****)
• Kill Bill Vol. 1 (****)
• Kill Bill Vol. 2 (****)
• Death Proof/Grindhouse (***1/2)

I appreciate Tarentino because he sees the art in exploitation films.  He’s a movie buff, and he makes movies that are more flicks than films, though that doesn’t stop them from being smart. He can make bad films good by taking delight in their badness (as Death Proof attests).

I kind of expected Inglourious Basterds to be a war movie — from the trailer it looked vaguely like The Dirty Dozen.

It’s not.

Once again, not recommended to all because of the ultraviolence.