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Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker. History is made. Bigelow collects the award from Barbara Streisland…. and moments later Tom Hanks announces that the Best Motion Picture is “The Hurt Locker” …and Bigelow gets to stay on stage for another award. Fabulous stuff… and that completes 6 out of 6 for our picks at tonight’s ceremony!

So now we finally move to the main awards and Best Actor… and Michelle Pfeiffer looks stunning. Jeff Bridges is a shoe in on this…so Kate Winslet, also looking stunning, announces that the Best Actor Oscar goes to… Jeff Bridges.

Best Actress is announced by Sean Penn… and the winner is…. Sandra Bullock who wins her first Oscar from her first nomination. “Did I really win this…or did I just wear you all down”….

Well that was pretty disgusting… both Farrah Fawcett and Bea Arthur failed to make the memorial part of the Oscars as James Taylor played to a moving montage of those we lost in the last year. Someone’s got some explaining to do…because that simply isn’t acceptable to millions of her fans. Us included.

Well…as I write,  the Oscar’s have been predictable…

The Oscar for sound editing went to Paul N.J. Ottosson for “The Hurt Locker.” Ottosson had barely left the stage when he was called back to receive the sound mixing award for the war drama with Ray Beckett. “The Hurt Locker” has won the most statuettes, with three.

Another movie performing well: “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.” Mo’Nique, considered the shoo-in for an Oscar for supporting actress as the vile, abusive mother of a pregnant teen in the harrowing drama took home the honor as expected. The comic talk-show host, who opted out of doing extensive campaigning this awards season, thanked the academy and said it proves that a win “can be about the performance and not the politics.” Mmmmmm…was she getting all political there?

Moments earlier, an emotional Geoffrey Fletcher won for adapted screenplay for “Precious.” Holding back the tears, Fletcher said: “I don’t know what to say. This is for everybody who works on a dream every day.” His win was a surprise: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner were the favorites for “Up in the Air.”

Until that moment, the 82nd annual Academy Awards felt like it was all going according to the odds makers.

The trophy for original song went to Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett for “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart).” The award for animated feature film went to “Up,” which is also nominated for best film. And as expected, Austrian actor Christoph Waltz danced away with supporting actor for playing a brutal Nazi Jew hunter in “Inglourious Basterds.” All three have dominated this awards season, winning practically every available honor.

Mark Boal won original screenplay for the war drama “The Hurt Locker.” It was followed by a tribute to the late, great teen-angst writer-director John Hughes, who died unexpectedly last year. Several of the Hughes veterans gathered on stage in his memory, including Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, Matthew Broderick and Judd Nelson.

Awards in the short-film categories were “Logorama” for animated, “Music by Prudence” for documentary and “The New Tenants” for live action. The honor for costume design went to Sandy Powell for “The Young Victoria.” Art direction went to Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg and set decorator Kim Sinclair for “Avatar,” which also won a cinematography trophy for Mauro Fiore.

Ben Stiller, decked out in “Avatar” Navi blue, complete with tail and braid, presented the best makeup award to “Star Trek.”

The show kicked off with Neil Patrick Harris, who got rave reviews for hosting the Tonys and the Emmys last year, performing a musical number — “No One Wants to Do It Alone.” It was a reference to the hosts of the show, the wild and crazy Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, or, as Harris called them, “the biggest pair since Dolly Parton.”

And with that, the hosts came down from the heavens at the Kodak Theatre, holding hands.

Well tonight’s the night we celebrate some ground breaking technology, career capping performances and the biggest Best Picture race we’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s Oscar night and there’s quite no other night like it.

In our household we put on the pre-show with the Countdown to the Red Carpet and then we stay glued to all the evenings events…managing to cook and eat dinner with crepes suzette to round it all off.

So let’s take a look at this year’s super-sized Best Picture. In the past academy members were asked to simply mark off the movie they liked the most. This year, however, we break with tradition as 10 movies are nominated and academy members have to rank the contenders from 1 through 10.

What happens next is that when all first place voting forms are counted the film with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and those voters second choices will count instead. This process will then continue until one move gains more than 50% of the vote. It is therefore entirely possible that the film with the most No. 1s won’t necessarily win!

So who are the nominees:

Avatar, Inglorious Basterds and The Hurt Locker are the early favorites with Up In The Air, Precious, An Education and District 9 all following closely. It’s highly thought that A Serious Man and The Blind Side will be most likely to be eliminated first of all.  Our pick: The Hurt Locker

In the Best Actor category we see Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart, George Clooney -  Up In The Air,  Colin Firth – A Single Man,  Morgan Freeman – Invictus and Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker are the nominees. Our Pick: Jeff Bridges

Best Actress: Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side, Gabourey Sidibe – Precious, Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia, Helen Mirren – The Last Station and Carey Mulligan – An Education all contend. This one will be a close race between Bullock and Streep. Our pick: Sandra Bullock

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds, Woody Harrelson – The Messenger, Stanley Tucci – Inglourious Basterds, Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones and Matt Damon – Invictus. No problem on this one… a clear cut Our Pick: Christoph Waltz.

Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique – Precious, Maggie Gyllenhaal – Crazy Heart, Anna Kendrick – Up In The Air, Penelope Cruz – Nine and Vera Farmiga – Up In The Air. Our Pick: Mo’Nique.

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker, James Cameron – Avatar, Lee Daniels – Precious, Jason Reitman – Up In The Air and Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds. Our Pick: Kathryn Bigelow.

So that’s all the awards we really care about isn’t it? Sure there’s another hundred categories such as Best Animated Feature (Our pick: Up), Best Foreign Language Film (who cares?), Best Documentary (The Cove), Best Make Up, Best Costume Design, Best Sound Editing / Mixing etc., but all we really care about are the top six categories… am I wrong?

Let me know what you think…who’s going to walk away with this year’s Oscar’s?

Enjoy you’re evening…