Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Only four women have ever been nominated for Best Director. One of them was not Barbra Streisand, who surely deserved it for Yentl. At this year's Oscars, Streisand gets the vicarious satisfaction of announcing, "The time has come. The winner is Kathryn Bigelow." Coming onstage and whispering to Streisand how honored she is to receive the award from her, Bigelow glows in "the moment of a lifetime." All the incoming fire that might have wounded The Hurt Locker — the flak over producer Nicolas Chartier's e-mailing some anti-Avatar messages, the lawsuit brought against screenwriter Mark Boal that charges him with lifting his main character from a soldier he had earlier profiled — doesn't discourage the Academy from making some overdue history by citing Bigelow. She dedicates her prize to the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan: "May they come home safe."