Plenty of Oscar winners already on DVD

Bigelow

So you were hoping Avatar was going to win the Oscar for Best Picture Sunday night at the 82nd Academy Awards — likely because it was one of the two nominated movies you saw. The other was probably Up, because the kids had to see that one, right?

Well, The Hurt Locker won instead, and took several other awards too, including Best Director, which for the first time ever went to a female movie director. But you didn’t want to pay full price for that one, or none of your friends wanted to see it, or nobody you knew had seen it and recommended it.

That’s what happens when our Netflix-Redbox lives intersect with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Many great films were honored Sunday, and by Tuesday seven of the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture will be available on DVD, so for those of you now feeling a rush of excitement to catch up with the winners let’s tell you what you can see and when you can see it.

Half of the 10 were released before the trophies were handed out, including director Kathryn Bigelow’s explosive Hurt Locker. [Grab the Blu-ray version if you can.] The others: Up, District 9, A Serious Man and Inglorious Basterds. Up won an Oscar Sunday for Best Animated Film and Christoph Waltz earned Best Supporting Actor hardware for Quentin Tarantino’s Basterds.

Tuesday is the release date for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire and Up in the Air. Despite nine nominations, Up in the Air, came up clutching air in the major categories, but that shouldn’t stop movie enthusiasts, especially George Clooney fans, from flocking it to it. Mo’Nique got a much-anticipated Supporting Actress Oscar for her mesmerizing role in Precious.

While most home theater viewers already can see the words ‘very long wait’ in their Netflix queues, Avatar has the longest wait among nominees until DVD release date — April 22. Avatar did not win any major awards Sunday, but took home deserving trophies for cinematography, visual effects and art direction, as it is truly a feast for the eyes.

Sandra Bullock earned her first Oscar for the Tennessee-based The Blind Side, but fans that didn’t see her stellar performance in theaters will have to wait until March 23 for the DVD. The final Best Picture nominee, An Education, will be out a week later on March 30.

Of interest to plenty of country music fans was the movie Crazy Heart, which earned Best Actor Jeff Bridges his first Oscar and captured Best Song for the Ryan Bingham-T-Bone Burnett-penned “The Weary Kind.” However, there is no DVD release date yet.

Star Trek, which was nominated for a pair of awards [and won Oscar for Best Makeup], is out now on DVD. But other films nominated for at least two Academy Awards that are not yet available on DVD are: Invictus, Nine, Crazy Heart, The Last Station [no release date set], The Princess and the Frog [March 16], The Fantastic Mr. Fox [March 23], Sherlock Holmes [March 30], The Young Victoria [April 20] and The Messenger [Mary 18].

Sunday night’s telecast of the Academy Awards was given two hosts — Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin — but thankfully did not lengthen the event.

While the show itself avoided any gaffes or controversy, it was the first that allowed viewers to text or ‘tweet’ real-time questions or comments during the broadcast. And despite James Taylor’s subdued, yet sensitive, “In My Life’ performance during the In Memoriam segment, comments were sent asking why Farrah Fawcett was not included among the stars who passed away last year.