Oscar outcome

I was 5 of 6 for the top awards at last night's Oscars. Sandra Bullock's shocking Best Actress win threw my predictions all out of whack. I also missed both screenplay picks, both documentaries, both short subjects, best foreign film, cinematography, sound editing and film editing. Ouch.

Otherwise, the night's big news was the groundbreaking win by Kathryn Bigelow for Best Picture and Best Director for the excellent but little-seen The Hurt Locker. Many people now know Bigelow as the first woman to win a directing Oscar and the ex-wife of James Cameron.

But you may not know that the 58-year-old Bigelow has a long list of credits prior to this year's award-winner.

Let's start with Near Dark, a 1987 roadhouse-meets-vampire film that has become a cult classic. Adrian Pasdar, Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton star.

Another Bigelow action film is Point Break, the 1991 feature starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. Best known for some amazing surfing and sky-diving sequences, the movie also features one of the best hand-held, first-person chases I've ever seen.

A couple of Bigelow films I have yet to watch include Strange Days, a 1995 science fiction feature written by James Cameron and starring Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett. Roger Ebert gives the movie four stars, and I am now trying to find the time to watch my DVD from Netflix.

And K-19:The Widowmaker (2002) is Bigelow's latest feature before tackling The Hurt Locker. The submarine drama stars Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson and is next in my Netflix cue.

What's next for Bigelow? This story says she is to direct the pilot for a new HBO series billed as a light family drama. Then she returns to the grittier side of life with a feature about a lawless region in South America known as the Triple Frontier.