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The History of American Cinema: 2010

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture, Director (Bigelow) and Actor (Jeremy Renner) awards from the National Society of Film Critics. [MORE]

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) declare David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. the Film of the Decade. [MORE]

The Hurt Locker wins Best Film and Director awards at the Critics Choice Awards, held at the Hollywood Palladium. [MORE]

James Cameron’s 3D epic Avatar wins Best Film Drama and Best Director awards at the Golden Globes. [MORE]

Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock win the Outstanding Performance Awards at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards at the Shrine Exposition Center in Los Angeles. [MORE]

James Cameron’s 3D Sci-fi extravaganza Avatar replaces the same director’s Titanic as the all-time global box-office champion when its sales reach $1.859 billion (£1.15 billion), surpassing the previous record of $1.843 billion (£1.14 billion) set by Titanic in 1998. [MORE]

79-year-old Clint Eastwood is voted the nation’s favourite movie star of 2009.   He replaces Denzel Washington, who had held the number one spot for the previous three years. [MORE]

Zelda Rubinstein, the diminutive actress who played the medium Tangina in Poltergeist (1982), dies in a Los Angeles hospital at the age of 76 after suffering a heart attack in November 2009. [ADD]

Veteran actor Rip Torn is arrested when he is found armed and extremely intoxicated after breaking in to his local branch in the small town of Salisbury.   He faces five serious charges which could theoretically see him spending the rest of his life behind bars. [MORE]

Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first female director to win the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award when The Hurt Locker wins over ex-husband James Cameron’s Avatar, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Lee Daniels’ Precious, and Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air.  83-year-old Norman Jewison picks up a Lifetime Achievement award. [ADD]

Internet reports state that Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov will combine to adapt Seth Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter for the screen. [ADD]

Nicholas Chartier, one of the producer’s of award’s favourite The Hurt Locker, is banned from attending the 2010 Academy Awards ceremony for openly campaigning against a rival film.   At the same time, Master Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver sues the film’s producers for ‘basing ‘virtually all of the situations’ in the film on his own experiences. [MORE]

RealNetworks Inc. agrees to pay $4.5 million and drop an appeal against a court order barring it from selling its DVD-copying software.   The company must also refund around 2,700 customers who bought the $30 RealDVD software program which allows users to save a copy of a DVD to a computer hard drive. [ADD]

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is released.   Despite variable reviews it earns $116.3 million domestic in its opening weekend, thanks in part to its 3D and IMAX formats.   The film stars Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Anne Hathaway, Alan Rickman, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall and Christopher Lee. [ADD]

Former 80s teen idol Corey Haim, who looked destined for a bright career after starring in the 1987 vampire movie The Lost Boys, dies from a suspected drugs overdose in Los Angeles at the age of 38. [ADD]

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) notifies the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it objects to two planned exchanges that would permit investors to trade in movie futures. [MORE]

Harvey Lowry, President of Drac Studios, announces the planned production of a 3D live action/CGI Christmas movie which will be narrated by Orson Welles, thanks to the recent discovery of tapes of the filmmaker’s narration of a children’s Christmas novel made months before his death in 1985. [MORE]

Doubt is cast over ownership of La Dolce Vita (1960) following the decision of a New York District Court judge to dismiss a copyright infringement case brought by International Media Films against the creator of a two-part pornographic remake of Federico Fellini’s classic film. [MORE]

Meinhardt Raabe, one of the last surviving Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz (1939), dies in Florida at the age of 94 following a cardiac arrest.   Raabe played the coroner in the classic film who uttered the lines of the Wicked Witch of the East: ‘As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead. She's really most sincerely dead.’ [ADD]

Paramount and Seagate join forces to offer external hard drives with pre-loaded movies. [MORE]

Dede Allen, the pioneering editor of such classics as The Hustler, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon dies at home at the age of 86 after suffering a stroke. [ADD]

Roman Polanski’s bid to be sentenced in absentia for a child sex case dating back to 1977 is rejected, clearing the way for the 76-year-old director to be extradited from Switzerland to the United States. [MORE]