Nerdiest.Oscars.Ever.

...and that is a good thing.

One would be forgiven for thinking the Academy Awards could not get any nerdier than they did in 2004 when Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King one eleven Oscars.  And, yes, that was a nerdtastic year.  Last night, however, trumped it in a number of ways.  Other than some technical nominations for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, LOTR:ROTK stood alone as the only nominated genre fiction that year.  This year, genre fiction and its creators abounded.  Here is a nerd's eye look at the 2010 Academy Awards:

The Producer of A Bucket of Blood clearly has made a great contribution to the Arts and Sciences.

Roger Corman received the Honorary Award at the Governors Awards for exceptional contribution to motion picture arts and sciences.  Feel free to read that again.  He also got some recognition in the horror tribute (I'll get to that) and got named checked by the Best Editing winner later in the night.  Check out this amazing tribute to the legend on The Academy website.   

Speaking of the horror tribute--hey, there was a tribute to the horror film.  The montage of great horror moments was actually pretty darn good.  They worked some connections to the night's festivities (Corman's Little Shop of Horrors was clipped and was the musical re-make which featured the night's co-host Steve Martin).  The montage ran the gamut from Nosferatu through the Universal monsters era and all the way to the slasher era.  Good stuff.  It is interesting that they introduced the clips by saying no horror film had won an Oscar since The Exorcist took home two in the 70's but included The Silence of the Lambs in the montage.  If I recall correctly, that baby took home a few awards, including the rare sweep of the big four--Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress.  

Forgot my Oscar, did you? Prepare to served up with some Fava beans.

Speaking of Best Film Editing, the winner was none other than Bob Murawski and Chris Innis.  Murawski is Sam Raimi's go to editor and editied the Spider-man movies, Army of Darkness, and The Gift.  Good to see the guy that got his start editing direct-to-video Skinemax fair like Animal Instincts 2 work his way to the top of his profession.

The expansion of Best Picture nominees to 73 meant that two science fiction films joined the small list of sci-fi Best Picture candidates.  Of course, like Star Wars, A Clockwork Orange and E.T. before them, Avatar and District 9 both failed to take home the big prize.

But, genre people still did well.  Best Director Kathryn Bigelow is well known to genre fans as the director of the wonderful horror film Near Dark and a pretty good sci-fi movie Strange Days.  

Revisionist vampire fiction at its best.

Best Director and Best Picture are big deals in the industry and it is great to see a horror veteran pulling down those huge awards.  Genre films are usually relegated to the technical awards (which happened again this year to Avatar.  Cameron will just have to lick his wounds with the nearly 3 Billion dollars the film has pulled in to date.  On a happier note, even the Best Acting awards had genre connections this year.  Best Actor winner Jeff Bridges has a huge genre role in his past...

No...wait.  Wrong guy.  Here we go...

and...

Oooh! Where'd you find that lens flare?

Bridges also has been cast in the re-launch of the Tron franchise, so he has genre work in his past and future.  And, finally, how cool is it that the cute young cop from Demolition Man just won a Best Actress Oscar?

Looks like there's a new shepherd in town.