Vatican daily comments on defeat of 'Avatar' at Oscars

Vatican City, Mar 9, 2010 / 11:03 am

L’Osservatore Romano (LOR) published an article yesterday commenting on the Oscar win by Kathryn Bigelow as best director for her film “The Hurt Locker.” The film took home five more Oscars than the box-office smash “Avatar,” directed by James Cameron.

The LOR article saw the two films as a match up between "David and Goliath," as Bigelow directed her independent film on a tiny budget, while Avatar was “the product of high-tech engineering” and directed by the “seemingly untouchable” Cameron.

In the end, Cameron fell to the “David of Kathryn Bigelow.”

While the Vatican newspaper praised Cameron for the many years he invested in Avatar, it pointed out that putting special effects above cinematography carries a great risk. “Thus Avatar seems more like a sequence of images, undoubtedly marvelous, but nonetheless simply placed one after the other, rather than a film,” the article said.

While Cameron basks in his millions in an industry that has become more commercialized and beholden to the illusion of 3D imagery, LOR continued, Bigelow shows she can roll up her sleeves and get dirty with the tools filmmakers have used since the beginning: “celluloid film and a pair of scissors, which she truly knows how to use like none other.”