Avatar won the Golden Globe for best dramatic motion picture Sunday. The victory cements Avatar's front-runner status in the Oscar race, as award season pundits place the picture at top of the heap, ahead of The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air and Inglourious Basterds.
Avatar auteur James Cameron also picked up the Best Director Golden Globe for helming the 3-D blockbuster that takes place on distant moon Pandora. Giving a shout-out to the film's cast in what was presumably the alien Na'vi language, Cameron thanked his motion-capture team in a brief speech. Cameron beat Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) and Clint Eastwood (Invictus) in the category.
"Hopefully, this is part of a trend of the acceptance of science fiction as a legitimate, dramatic form of cinema," Cameron said as he accepted a statuette (video above). "Not a genre, but a form of drama."
Robert Downey Jr. won the Best Actor trophy for his bare-knuckle reinvention of Sherlock Holmes. Christoph Waltz picked up the Best Supporting Actor award honoring his brilliant performance as a nightmare Nazi in Inglourious Basterds.
Up won Best Animated Feature Film, beating out Wes Anderson's hand-crafted The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Henry Selick's stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline
The Hangover won top prize in the Best Comedy or Musical category. Read the full list of 2010 winners on the Golden Globes website.
See Also:
- Avatar Obsessives: Read Uncut Script, Join Na'vi Tribe
- Review: Powerful Avatar Stuns the Eye, Seduces the Heart
- James Cameron’s New 3-D Epic Could Change Film Forever
- Blue Streak: Avatar Passes $1 Billion Mark Worldwide
- Cameron: For Most Immersive Avatar Experience, Go Imax
- Na’vi Sex Scene Might Show Up on Avatar DVD
