James Cameron Will Upset His Ex-Wife At The Oscars

The battle for Best Director honors at the Oscars is, like the Best Picture category, a two horse race between James Cameron for Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. While the other nominees put forth some memorable movies, what differentiates the two favorites in the category goes well beyond their ended marriage. This is one of the industry’s biggest forces of nature going up against a woman whose only other notable movie is K-19: The Widowmaker.

I broke down in my Best Picture betting preview that one of the elements of Avatar that I marveled at was its visual effects and that’s what essentially makes Cameron my favorite bet of the night. Avatar is a fantastic film, but more so because of what it accomplished as a production and less because of its story.

In fairness, it’s not like The Hurt Locker is a mind-bending thriller. What makes The Hurt Locker special is what it accomplished despite an $11 million budget and an unheralded cast. Bigelow is the -500 favorite to win the award, largely because Avatar is expected to trump her in the Best Picture category.

Bigelow would certainly put herself in exceptional company alongside Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers and last year’s winner Danny Boyle should she win the award as our oddsmakers predict she will.

Quentin Tarantino is listed at +2500 to win the award for Inglorious Basterds, and I find it virtually impossible for him to win considering that it wasn’t his best effort. Yes, I know I’m one of the few people who despised this movie because of its inability to develop meaningful characters in a choppy revenge plot that sees Hitler getting gunned down. But Tarantino didn’t accomplish anything particularly marvelous with his latest.

The guy I would actually prefer to win the award is Jason Reitman for Up In The Air. At +5000 he has a long ways to go to catch up with the winners, but this was simply a captivating film based on simplistic measures. Though he won’t win the award this year, his resume is becoming something I’m jealous of. Juno and Thank You For Smoking, along with his latest film, make any Reitman picture worth seeing. A great director indeed, but an Oscar winner? Probably not in this lifetime.

Rounding out the nominees is the underdog Lee Daniels, listed at +7000 for Precious.

Cameron’s Avatar was simply a visual spectacle, something we have never seen at the theatres and not just because it was seen in 3-D. He had a vision almost two decades ago but the technology was not present to make his dream come true. In 2010 we saw a film truly like no other, and the kind of imagination it takes to see a movie like Avatar come to life is beyond reason.

Cameron won the award in 1997 for Titanic and he’ll become a two time Oscar winner for Best Director when the voters sit down to discuss all he achieved with Avatar. At +300, it’s a promising bet to take in our entertainment props no matter how much you appreciate what his ex-wife did with The Hurt Locker.

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