Iraqi elections compete with Hurt Locker for world's attention

Just as Baghdad was rocked by hundreds of election morning mortars, so is a global audience riveted on this evening's chances of a lone bomb-defusing Sergeant in Baghdad defeating the blue defenders of Avatar.

The attention of the world is focused on Iraq today, really and surreally. Of course there's the election, with some 19 million registered Iraqi voters, and then there's the Oscars, with a TV audience of who knows how many gazillion worldwide.

Although it's slightly easier to attend your neighbor's lame Oscar party, than for a regular Iraqi, to risk his life, and family's livelihood, to go vote for a candidate possibly beholden to foreign interests, yet thousands, millions are voting and 38 Iraqis were killed in the act today, standing in line to enter the cardboard voting booths, as seen on Al Jazeera, or even the ones who stayed home.

Now, halfway across the world, Hurt Lockers gonna win best picture. And while braving the dip bowl, some are wondering, if by the way, Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow, based on an embedded reporters script from his experiences with an EOD (Explosives Ordinance Demolition) unit in Baghdad, is really that good or is it more a series of mission impossible, booby trap scenarios barely escaped by a balls-to-the-walls, cool guy with a sensitive, alcoholic, risk-taking personality.

Hurt Locker captures the adrenaline of soldiers trying to survive the war, and it does extremely well in the first few minutes of letting us feel the sand, dust, sweat and shock wave. But, when our anti-hero escapees one trap, he next finds himself encircled by trip wires connected to nine artillery shells, having already removed his bomb-proof helmet, shit!

But he escapes death only to later confront a Frankenstein-like Iraqi victim entrapped in a suicide cage of death, and I start to feel like I'm watching the latest first person shooter game featuring a Baghdad-like interface on HD.

U.S. Veterans have weighed in on Hurt Locker from both sides, from Bouhammer's blog post claiming he was "amazed a movie so bad could get any accolades," and breaking down some of the more absurd scenes, like our protagonist running unmolested through downtown Baghdad at night in his ACUs and combat boots, to a soldier wounded in Iraq calling the movie "therapeutic."

I hate to be a hater on a story that has touched so many and made millions, especially on a war reporter Mark Boal's script, which he adapted from a story he wrote for Playboy; or to be one of those war nerds who breaks down what's unrealistic about every weapon fired, movement made and/or violent death in every scene. But without the emotional truths of risk taking ripping apart the EOD team, and the after-effects of how this kind of work makes it very difficult to get into say, going to the supermarket with your estranged wife, Hurt Locker, is a bunch of booby trap scenarios akin to the Saw series filmed in Baghdad, without the killer in the goofy mask, but featuring a bad ass bomb killer with mercury in his veins, and a cool bomb-proof suit that sometimes works.

Now on to the real stuff that's harder to parse- Iraqi election machinations. There is now only a placeholder government in Iraq, the Parliament is in limbo waiting for its elected Parliamentarians to take their new seats. Because Iraq is based on a Parliamentary (read British) system, the party with the most votes chooses the next Prime Minister.

With neither the party of Maliki, Hakim or Alawi predicted to get a clear majority of today's votes, the coalition building (read horse trading) among the parties has been going on for months, according to a long time government of Iraq advisor.

For the pessimists, it took five months for a coalition government to be formed in 2005. For the optimists, Iraq is now the only Arab country that has held two successive, somewhat transparent elections in which voters today, voted for actual candidates, not just party placeholders.