The 82nd Academy Awards honoured many films adapted from books, in the annual ceremony presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Monday.
The Oscar for best adapted screenplay went to the film Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (a self-explanatory film title) for Geoffrey Fletcher's adaptation of Push (Sapphire, Vintage). The film is about Claireece Precious Jones, a pregnant, black, illiterate, 16-year-old girl in high school, who has been abused by her parents. Precious escapes her traumatic existence through imagination and fantasy, finds inspiration to read from her new English teacher, and moves out of home.
Other nominations for best adapted screenplay were: An Education from Lynn Barber's novel of the same name (Penguin); In the Loop, based on The Thick of It (Armando Iannucci, Hodder); Up in the Air based on Walter Kirn's novel of the same name (John Murray); and also District 9 an adaptation of the film Alive in Joburg by Neill Blomkamp.
Sandra Bullock won best actress for The Blind Side, a sports-drama film based on the book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (Michael Lewis, W W Norton). Helen Mirren was also nominated for best actress for her part as Sofya Tolstoy in The Last Station, a German biographical film, based on novel of the same name (Jay Parini, Text).
Jeff Bridges won an Oscar for best actor for his part in Crazy Heart a musical-drama film, based on the 1987 novel Crazy Heart (Consair) by Thomas Cobb. Morgan Freeman missed out on best actor, nominated for playing Nelson Mandela in Invictus, based on the book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation (John Carlin, Atlantic Books). Colin Firth also missed out, nominated for his part in A Single Man, based on the novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood (Vintage).
The Oscar for best foreign language film went to El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret In Their Eyes) an Argentine crime film, based on Eduardo Sacheri's novel La pregunta de sus ojos (The Question In Their Eyes, Galerna).
