BBC:

A producer for Oscar-nominated war film The Hurt Locker will not be allowed to attend the awards ceremony after breaking Academy rules.

Nicolas Chartier has been barred from the event after sending an e-mail to voters urging them to name his movie as best film over rival Avatar.

Academy rules prohibit the mailing of members to promote or disparage a film.

But should The Hurt Locker win best picture, Chartier will still receive his Oscar statuette at a later date.

In his email, which was sent to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in late February, Chartier asked members to choose The Hurt Locker over what he described as "a $500 million film" - a clear reference to fellow best picture contender Avatar.

Subsequent emails, posted by the Los Angeles Times, showed Chartier asking Oscar voters to rank his film at number one and Avatar at number 10 among the list of nominated films.

I can see clearly now: The substance of Avatar is more rewarding than the substance of The Hurt Locker. Why? Because Avatar is really rooted in the Marxist politics first expressed in Aliens, the best film in that series. Avatar is nothing but Aliens II—a critique of corporate power and American militarism (the corporation in Aliens is, in fact, the ancestor of the corporation in District 9—a film that almost did not fail).

In the end Avatar's politics penetrates the thick wall of the masses and plants a pretty good idea of what is truly bad about capitalism and, in general, the history of this civilization. This kind of important information you will not get from the surface or core of The Hurt Locker. Nor will you understand why the American army is in Iraq—the biggest crime of the previous decade. There is not an ounce of history in The Hurt Locker; the movie is mainly about individuals who are just trying to do their job the best way they can. This is a dangerous message to send to the poorly educated masses of America.

As for the one and only political scene in The Hurt Locker, the Wal-Mart moment, it's not long enough to cause even a dent on the thick wall of the masses. Avatar makes it politics bright (blue) and clear, which is why things like this—a confusion between fantasy and political reality—are happening on the WWW:

A Demonstrator dressed as a figure of the movie 'Avatar', shouts slogans against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Bilin near Ra...

Even though it made tons of dough, Avatar provides the general public with a politics that serves its interests, and The Hurt Locker does not. Down with The Hurt Locker.