LOS ANGELES – Kathryn Bigelow played field commander to bring her raw, relentless Iraq War thriller The Hurt Locker to the screen.

The Oscars this year brought big wins for The Hurt Locker, Bigelow, Bullock, and Bridges.

After her film triumphed at the Academy Awards with six prizes and made her the first woman ever to win the directing Oscar, she graduated to diplomat with her deft handling of some uncomfortable personal questions from reporters after the show.

Bigelow’s rivals included a man from her past — ex-husband James Cameron, whose science-fiction epic Avatar also was nominated for the best picture and director that she won.

Backstage, Bigelow judiciously handled reporters’ queries about Cameron, who was seated right behind her at the Oscars and joined the standing ovation she received, clapping heartily and saying, “Yes, yes” after she won best director.

“Jim is very inspiring. I think he inspires filmmakers around the world, and for that, I think I can speak for all of them. We’re quite grateful,” Bigelow said.

Asked what she might say to Cameron about winning over him, Bigelow gave a big laugh and shrugged off the question.

“You left me speechless,” Bigelow said. She and Cameron were married from 1989-91, and Cameron won best director and picture for his 1997 blockbuster Titanic.

First-time winners took all four acting prizes: Sandra Bullock as best actress for The Blind Side; Jeff Bridges as best actor for Crazy Heart; Mo’Nique as supporting actress for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire; and Christoph Waltz as supporting actor for Inglourious Basterds.

Bigelow downplayed descriptions of herself as a female filmmaker throughout awards season. After the Oscars, she reiterated that sentiment but made it clear she was eager for other women to follow her lead in winning Hollywood’s top filmmaking honor.

“I hope I’m the first of many, and of course, I’d love to just think of myself as a filmmaker. And I long for the day when that modifier can be a moot point,” Bigelow said. “But I’m very grateful if I can inspire some young, intrepid, tenacious male or female filmmaker and have them feel that the impossible is possible, and never give up on your dream.”

Bullock’s win came a day after she won worst-actress for her romantic comedy flop All About Steve at the Razzies, a spoof of the Oscars that mocks Hollywood’s low-points of the year.

The Razzie win makes Bullock the only actress to receive that dubious prize and an Oscar on the same weekend. Bullock became one of the few Razzie winners ever to collect her trophy in person, showing up at the ceremony Saturday pulling a little red wagon filled with DVDs of All About Steve for the audience there.

Where will she keep her Oscar and Razzie?

“They’ll sit side by side on a nice little shelf somewhere. The Razzie maybe on a different shelf. Lower,” said Bullock, who was a great sport throughout awards season, joking about her worst-actress Razzie nomination. “You take the good with the not-so-good.”

The Oscar marks a career peak for Bridges, a beloved Hollywood veteran who had been nominated four times in the previous 38 years without winning. Describing his long career, he borrowed some lines from one of his most endearing and enduring characters, the laid-back bowler the Dude from The Big Lebowski.

“Ups and downs. What does the Dude say? Strikes and gutters, man,” Bridges said backstage. “I’m big on the Dude. I love him.”

Known mainly for brazen comedy routines and roles in lowbrow films, Mo’Nique startled audiences with a dark turn as a reprehensible welfare mother in Precious.

Asked backstage if things would change for her, Mo’Nique declared, “I am a standup comedian who won an Oscar.”

Austrian-born Waltz, a veteran TV and stage actor in Europe but virtually unknown in Hollywood before Quentin Tarantino cast him in Inglourious Basterds, reflected on his sudden Oscar celebrity.

“It’s mind-boggling. It’s fantastic. It’s very intense,” Waltz said. “And tomorrow I’ll probably be sorry it’s over,” he said.

The Hurt Locker scored a victory for war-on-terror dramas, which until now had found little favor with audiences shell-shocked by nightly news coverage of the action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The film stars Jeremy Renner as the ace leader of a bomb-disposal unit in Iraq, a man whose addiction to the adrenaline rush of war endanger his colleagues (Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty).

War films normally are the arena of male directors, but Bigelow has made action and stories about tough men a specialty, her films including the Keanu Reeves-Patrick Swayze thriller Point Break and Harrison Ford’s submarine adventure K-19: The Widowmaker.

K-19 was a 2002 flop, and it took Bigelow years to get back in action with The Hurt Locker, which premiered at the Venice and Toronto film festivals in September 2008.

While it pulled in $12.6 million domestically, a respectable showing for an independent film without big stars, The Hurt Locker is the lowest-grossing best-picture winner in this modern era of detailed box-office bookkeeping.

It took in less than one-fourth the haul of 2005 best-picture winner Crash, itself one of the least commercially successful recipients of the top Oscar.

Along with Avatar, the biggest modern blockbuster with $720 million domestically, the best-picture competition included the $200 million smashes Up and The Blind Side and the $100 million hits District 9 and Inglourious Basterds.”

Like Crash, The Hurt Locker was a rare film that swooped in from outside the Hollywood studios to earn the industry’s highest tribute. The Hurt Locker was acquired by Summit Entertainment after the film played at the Toronto festival, where Crash also was bought by distributor Lionsgate.

Joining Bigelow to collect the best-picture Oscar were Hurt Locker producers Mark Boal, who also won the prize for original screenplay, and Greg Shapiro.

A fourth producer — financier Nicolas Chartier, a key money man behind the film — was barred from attending as punishment for violating awards rules by sending e-mails to Oscar voters urging them to back The Hurt Locker over Avatar.

Oscar overseers said Chartier still will receive his best-picture Oscar, but at a later time.

“We haven’t spoken to him yet,” Shapiro said. “He sent me a very beautiful e-mail. He had a party thrown for him, and I think he’s very pleased.”

By Lisa Fernandez, mercurynews.com

Lawrence Wang used to hate the shrill sounds of the flute. He’d clamp his hands over his ears to drown out his sister’s piano playing. During music lessons, he’d fidget and fight with his teacher.

Members of "Magic Makers" perform at a special needs performance of the Jungle Book at the Mexican Heritage plaza in San Jose Saturday Mar. 6, 2010. From left are, Lawrence Wong, 20, Bernard Smith, 23, Chiling Wu, 19, and Anthony Nakamoto, 16. These teens aren't just any rock stars. They're autistic and they play music pretty well without even practicing. Their mothers call them "music savants" who simply listen to a song on YouTube and then play it, to the standing ovations of their friends and families, some of whom doubted these kids would ever fit in normally. (Photo by Patrick Tehan/Mercury News)

On Saturday, though, he tapped his feet while blowing happily on his saxophone, a member of an unusual band of special-needs performers.

Those who love Wang and his peers are thrilled to see how music calms their autistic nerves and becomes a unifying force in a world where they often don’t easily fit.

“Don’t ever give up on your children,’’ said Lawrence’s mother, Anna Wang of Fremont, who through her son, now 20, has become a prominent Silicon Valley autism activist.

“You’ve got to open them up to possibilities. We so often write them off. It doesn’t do our children justice. God has gifts for everyone.’’

Later this month, Wang and 21 others have gigs at the East Side Union High School District and at a Santa Clara restaurant with the predominantly autistic band, the Magic Makers.

Autism is a bioneurological disease often marked by impaired social behavior, such as making scant eye contact and speaking repetitively. As the 1988 film Rain Man demonstrated, autistic people can also have genius-like qualities. In that Academy-Award winning film, the lead character, played by Dustin Hoffman, was gifted in memory and math.

Some of the Magic Makers are gifted in music.

Wang’s mother calls him a “music savant.” He doesn’t practice.

He doesn’t sight-read. And he still mostly argues with his music teachers during lessons. But pop in a CD, and in an instant “Lawrence hears the music and almost simultaneously transposes it,’’ his mother said. “It’s really weird.’’

It may be a little weird at first, said David Ladd Anderson, the band’s director, but it’s also wonderful.

“These guys can sing and play at a really high level,’’ said Anderson, who is also a wildly popular music teacher at Buchser School in Santa Clara, where he started a dancing group for kids with special needs 10 years ago. “The singers have perfect pitch. The musicians give 100 percent effort even if they don’t look or talk to each other much.’’

On Saturday, Wang and his three autistic friends didn’t need to look at each other much as they jammed on Disney’s The Jungle Book’s tunes at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose. They joined a larger performance put on by Angels on Stage, a theater troupe of children with special needs.

As the performers entertained the audience from the balcony, you’d never know Wang picked up the saxophone three months ago and rarely practices. He hit the notes and kept up with the steady beat of drummer Chi-Ling Wu, 19, of San Jose.

In between sets, you might notice that Wang is autistic. He didn’t really want to answer questions about his musical talents. Instead, he slouched over a video game and kept asking his mother if they’d be back in the car by 4 p.m. after the show, as she had promised.

“He likes things a certain way every day,’’ Anna Wang said. “These performances mess up his schedule.’’

Fellow musician Anthony Nakamoto of San Jose, is much more gregarious than Wang. When meeting a stranger for the first time, this 16-year-old asks rapid fire: What kind of car do you drive? What model? What make?

Then, on stage, he transforms into a rock star. To watch him play the electric guitar, xylophone or, as he did Saturday, the marimba is to be amazed. Although he rarely practices and learns his favorite Beatles tunes simply by clicking on YouTube, he’s fun to watch, banging his sticks with amazing zest and zeal.

“You know, he doesn’t communicate with other kids except for music,’’ said his mother, Hiroko Nakamoto. “His communication tool is music. It’s just great therapy.’’

Donna Smith of San Jose always feels better when the music starts for her 23-year-old son, Bernard. To her, Bernard seemed agitated being in a theater with lots of strangers.

He sat by himself at one point, whispering aloud to himself before the show.

But just talk to him about music. Ask him what his favorite song is. He won’t just answer. Instead, in perfect, angelic pitch, he’ll break out the Monkees’ hit “Daydream Believer.”

“Bernard’s excellent,’’ his mother said, adding that he plays with a few other mainstream jazz groups. “He’s good enough to be professional, except for his autistic behavior.

He’s easily frustrated. He gets anxious. He stresses and he paces. But as soon as the music starts, the problems go away.’’

First thing’s first, “Why is a Raven like a Writing Desk?” Make sure to get out to see Alice in Wonderland to find out the answer to this riddle!

Alice in Wonderland is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under pseudonym Lewis Carroll in 1865.

Alice’s [Adventures] in Wonderland is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under pseudonym Lewis Carroll in 1865. The popular story is about a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic in ways that has given the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children.

Tim Burton’s 2010 Alice in Wonderland is a fantasy adventure film written by Linda Woolverton. The movie stars an eccentric cast, including Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Michael Sheen, and Stephen Fry.

In the film, Alice is now 19 and accidentally returns to Wonderland. She is told that she is the only one that can slay the Jabberwocky, a dragon controlled by the Red Queen.

Burton doesn’t see this as a sequel to previous films or as a re-imagining; he believes the original Wonderland was only about a girl wandering around from one character to another without an emotional connection. Burton wanted to make his feel more like a story than a series of events. The film uses a technique of combining live action and animation into unusual graphic scenes.

Alice in Wonderland will open to more than $100 million in the U.S. and Canada alone after audiences packed theaters on its opening Friday. The 3-D adaptation of the classic fairy tale sold approximately $41 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada on Friday according to distributor and financier Walt Disney Studios. Assuming the film follows the path of a normal PG-rated Disney-family movie, it should collect about $110 million this weekend. With this goal in sight it will reach the second-highest opening ever outside of summer, (not accounting price inflation) after November’s The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

Altogether, whether you’re a nonsensical fan, Johnny Depp fan, a Tim Burton fan, or an Alice in Wonderland fan, this film is a must see: but save your bucks and skip the expensive 3-D option. The only thing worth seeing was the Cheshire Cat (he’s my favorite) and very few others.

By Barbara Manners, First Fridays, New Haven

Lots of Folks Love Phil Ochs: CT Folk’s First Fridays Concert Series Presents a Tribute to the Man and his Music

If you lived through the 60’s and had even the slightest awareness of the war raging half way across the world, you would remember Phil Ochs. Whether you supported or opposed the Vietnam War at the time, Ochs was the smart, satirical, and musical embodiment of the anti-war movement.

With songs like “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “Draft Dodger Rag,” “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends,” “Changes,” and “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” Phil was unafraid to skewer the hypocrisy he saw on the right, on the left, and in the center. He received enthusiastic acclaim at venues like the Newport Folk Festival and Carnegie Hall despite the informal blacklisting treatment he received from TV and most commercial radio stations. Along with Joan Baez, he became the singing voice of the anti-war movement as he appeared at major rallies from coast to coast.

To J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, who kept an extensive file on him, he was anti-American. To many he was a truth-telling hero whose early and tragic death in 1976 left us bereft, wondering if there would ever be another songwriter who could transform the topics of the day into timeless message that transcend any particular era.

The songs of Phil Ochs should be part of your life. Whether you remember the man himself or want to get hip to him now you’ll enjoy and embrace his songs on Friday, Apr.

9, when Phil’s sister Sonny Ochs presents “Phil Ochs Song Night” at First Fridays, New Haven located at First Presbyterian Church. The evening, which begins at 7:30 pm, features a number of today’s most prominent “topical” songwriters singing a collection of Phil Ochs’ songs and their own originals. All of these songs are driven by politics and timeless truths. Artists will include Pat Wictor, Kate McDonnell, Kim & Reggie Harris, Greg Greenway, John Flynn, Nancy Tucker, and Magpie.  Tickets are $16 in advance, $12 for seniors and students at www.ctfolk.com, and $20 at the door. For further information call 203 431-6501.

NEW YORK – Lil Wayne  is set to begin an expected jail term on a New York gun case, after a dental problem and a courthouse fire pushed his sentencing back a month.

The rap star is scheduled to be sentenced Monday to a year in city jail. He pleaded guilty in October to attempted criminal possession of a weapon. He admitted illegally having a loaded gun on his tour bus in July 2007.

His sentencing was initially pushed back from Feb. 9 so he could have surgery on his bejeweled teeth. It was postponed again last week when a fire shut down Manhattan’s main criminal courthouse while he was on his way there.

Lil Wayne has been one of rap’s most prolific and profitable figures in recent years. His Tha Carter III was the best-selling album of 2008.

NEW YORK – The president of Brooklyn has declared Beyonce an official Brooklynite.

Beyonce Knowles attends a press conference to unveil the Beyonce Cosmetology Center at Phoenix House in Brooklyn, New York on Friday, March 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes)

Borough President Marty Markowitz said Beyonce is a Brooklynite by marriage and by moxie. Beyonce’s husband, Jay-Z, is from Brooklyn.

The superstar visited the New York City borough Friday for the opening of the Beyonce Cosmetology Center at a residential substance abuse treatment center.

The Phoenix House offers programs for residents in carpentry, building maintenance, computer technology and culinary arts.

Beyonce said she thought it also should have more programs geared toward women. She said her mother’s Houston salon helped so many people feel good about themselves and better their lives.

Beyonce first spent time at Phoenix House when preparing for the role of Etta James in the 2008 film, Cadillac Records.

NEW YORK – Early indications are that an Academy Awards telecast where The Hurt Locker topped the popular Avatar for best picture was popular with viewers.

The Nielsen Co.’s overnight measurement of the nation’s 56 biggest markets gave ABC’s telecast a 26.5 rating and 40 audience share. That’s a 14 percent increase over the same rating for last year’s telecast, when Slumdog Millionaire was named best picture.

Nielsen is expected to give an estimate of the audience size later Monday. Last year’s telecast was seen by 36.3 million people. Each rating point represents 1,149,000 households, and the share means that 40 percent of the televisions being used at the time were tuned into the Oscars. The Oscars had a 29.4 rating in the New York market, Nielsen said. That was 11 percent above the average for other big cities and No. 13 among those cities.

From the Associated Press

After saying goodbye on concert stages and online video streams, Lil Wayne had nothing to add as he was sentenced Monday to a year in jail for having a loaded gun on his tour bus.

The Grammy Award-winning rapper delivered only a brief bow to fans and supporters as he was led out of a courtroom in handcuffs to start serving his sentence.

With that, Lil Wayne headed off to face his punishment in a case that had shadowed him as he became one of music’s most prolific and profitable figures in recent years. Arrested in July 2007, he pleaded guilty in October to attempted criminal possession of a weapon. He admitted he had the loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic gun on his bus.

His lawyer, Stacey Richman, said the rapper was resolute as he was taken away.

“He knew what he had to do, and he’s doing it,” she said.

Lil Wayne arrived later Tuesday at the Rikers Island jail complex, where he was being held apart from the general population of inmates because of his fame. He has a cell to himself but the option of spending time in a TV room with 17 other inmates who also have been separated from the general population because of notoriety or other reasons, according to the city Correction Department.

It wasn’t immediately clear what work assignment he might have, if any. The 27-year-old rap star could be released in about eight months with good behavior.

Lil Wayne, born Dwayne Carter, is going behind bars with his career in full throttle. His “Tha Carter III” was the best-selling album of 2008 and won a Grammy for best rap album. His latest album, “Rebirth,” was released last month.

He made a point of leaving fans with fanfare, from a “farewell tour” in recent months to a series of videos on the Web site Ustream on Sunday.

“Law is mind without reason … I’ll return,” he wrote on his Twitter account Monday morning.

Dozens of fans jockeyed with photographers waiting on the courthouse steps Monday afternoon, cheering as Lil Wayne, fellow rapper Birdman and others arrived. Shouts of “Oh, man” and “Keep your head up, Weezy!” — a nickname he often uses — erupted in the courtroom as he was sentenced.

Although Lil Wayne had agreed to go to jail, a number of roadblocks kept him from starting his sentence in recent weeks.

First, his sentencing was postponed in February so he could undergo surgery on his bejeweled teeth. Then, a fire shut down Manhattan’s main criminal courthouse while he was on his way there last week.

He told Rolling Stone for a story last month that he planned to keep working while behind bars.

“I’ll be still rapping in there, have a gang of raps ready when I come back home,” he said.

As for listening to music, inmates are allowed to buy AM/FM radios at the jail commissary.

From The Associated Press

The president of Brooklyn has declared Beyonce an official Brooklynite.

Borough President Marty Markowitz said Beyonce is a Brooklynite by marriage and by moxie. Beyonce’s husband, Jay-Z, is from Brooklyn.

The superstar visited the New York City borough Friday for the opening of the Beyonce Cosmetology Center at a residential substance abuse treatment center.

The Phoenix House offers programs for residents in carpentry, building maintenance, computer technology and culinary arts.

Beyonce said she thought it also should have more programs geared toward women. She said her mother’s Houston salon helped so many people feel good about themselves and better their lives.

Beyonce first spent time at Phoenix House when preparing for the role of Etta James in the 2008 film, “Cadillac Records.”

From The Associated Press

A woman claiming to be the wife of Sean “Diddy” Combs has been arrested after making two visits to a Long Island house she erroneously believed was the home of the hip-hop superstar.

Cemelia Green has pleaded not guilty to criminal mischief and trespassing and has been freed on $5,000 bail.

On Feb. 22, she asked directions to Combs’ home at the East Hampton police station, but was refused. Shortly after, police arrested Green at the house where she was seen Feb. 12.

Combs is not married. His spokeswoman did not immediately comment.