I don’t have a lot of opinions about the Oscar results, but I was definitely interested in the competition between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, which are the only two contending films I saw.

Some people may draw comparisons to the year when Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture. I never saw Shakespeare in Love, and it seems to have been forgotten, but Saving Private Ryan will always remain as one of the best war movies ever.

The Hurt Locker was a small movie, compared to Avatar. But I’m totally okay with it winning Best Picture. It was a truly memorable movie.

A number of scenes from The Hurt Locker are etched in my memory:

• The creepy Iraqi with the videocamera filming while they were trying to defuse a car bomb.
• The sniper scene out in the desert.
• The attempt to defuse the bomb padlocked around a guy.
• Jeremy Renner’s character standing in a street and pulling up a whole circle of bombs, with a creepy (I’ve used that word again) man of uncertain motives watching through a window and finally slinking away.

I tell people I felt dusty after watching the movie. I’ve not been to Iraq, but I felt like I was there.

(Speaking of creepy: what’s with that Hurt Locker producer jerking Kathryn Bigelow around by her arm? A ground-breaking moment for women, in that a woman wins Best Director, but you see this guy directing her around like she’s a child.)

Then there’s the Avatar juggernaut, biggest blockbuster in history. It didn’t affect me emotionally like The Hurt Locker, but the innovation was, ahem, out of this world. I’m sure it broke new ground in movie-making. I can’t come within lightyears of comprehending James Cameron’s vision and thought processes for that movie. Avatar was truly a masterwork of directing.

So here’s what I would like to have seen:

• Give Best Picture to The Hurt Locker.
• Give Best Director to James Cameron.