Sound the adjutant’s call. Cue the trumpets. Sometimes, the underdog wins. Sometimes, the unlikely hero rises to the occasion from the shadows. Sometimes, good films get recognized. The 82nd Academy Awards’ letters came in Sunday night.

It’s not quite old news yet, not quite beaten to death, but Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, K-19) is the first woman to win Best Director at the Oscars. She’s made a career filming distinctive, intelligent-if-risky action films. Coming out of neither left nor right field, she helmed The Hurt Locker, a whole new class of war movie for the Iraqi Freedom generation and for the timeless tradition of films depicting the struggle and tension of survival amidst the dehumanizing campaign that is human warfare. A taut, character-driven, apolitical and indie-sensible war film, The Hurt Locker was the little vehicle that could, besting audience favorite and budgetary juggernaut Avatar for the night’s top prizes, and a sum of six wins out of nine total nominations.

Much hullabaloo has ensued regarding the fact that Bigelow and Avatar director James Cameron are exes, and that the two films were forerunners in a race pitting big-budget blockbusters vs. fiscally conservative filming. There were other controversies involving Sasha Baron Cohen’s rejected skit involving Cameron’s film (and his subsequent ban from the ceremony) and a producer of The Hurt Locker sending his own version of the Zimmerman telegram to the Academy voters (“pleeeeeease vote for my movie!!1!”), which also earned him a ban and a possible denial of a trophy.

The Hurt Locker won for Original Screenplay, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Film Editing (its most pedestrian quality, and yet it won over District 9, but whatever). For anyone who could have predicted the thrills of the film, you’re free to disagree. No one can argue with the fact that every bang and boom was felt squarely in the sternum, every moment of pathos smothering the inner ear with deafening silence.

Avatar sincerely earned its wins for Art Direction and Visual Effects (see … I don’t hate the film unilaterally!), and de facto won the Cinematography award, although most of the scenery was the Hollywood version of Photoshop …

… and Star Trek got a little credit for its Vulcan ears, E.T.-eyed gynecologists, and green-skinned biddies with its Best Makeup win. The Young Victoria won for its costumes … but the film was a glorified costume drama anyway.

There’s no comment for Bridges, Bullock, Waltz, and … Mo’Nique (does she even have a last name? it’s like Superbad all over again) winning their acting accolades, because the Golden Globes telegraphed those wins, and the Critics Choice Awards and Screen Actors Guild echoed in suit. No Harvey Milk surprises (however pleasant that surprise was) this year. The biggest turn was the top spot, although Bridges’ performance in Crazy Heart was a surprise hit. Before his sneak, it was looking like Clooney’s year. Poor Meryl is 0 for 12 now. I liked The Blind Side, although I’m not sure if Bullock deserved to contribute to Streep’s Scorsese-streak, or overshadow newcomer Gabourey Sidibe’s whirlwind force of a debut. Bullock is now the first person to win an Oscar and a Golden Raspberry Award (for her cancerous, red-booted, shallow-end drowning of a “performance” in All About Steve) in the same year. It’s a year of firsts.

Up won the obvious Best Animated Feature award and pulled a surprising twofer with its uplifting (get it?) Best Score. And “The Weary Heart” served as a perfect anthem for Crazy Heart’s Bad Blake, trumping the phoned-in works penned for The Princess and the Frog. We’ll never get another “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” or “I’ll Make A Man Out of You” (which didn’t get any nominations but wins most people’s award for Best Disney Song Ever, EVER, that boys feel no shame in singing along to, in public or otherwise).

Precious definitely deserved its Best Adapted Screenplay for capturing the harshness, to say the least, of Sapphire’s book, and communicating the difficulty its narrator has communicating while making the jump from “illiterate” syntax-heavy writing to voiceover and monologue.

The greatest thing about the Oscars this year compared to last, is that the small films got their due. The Hurt Locker and Precious would have never gotten their due, or Crazy Heart. And small-but-powerful performances at least got the nods they deserved, from Mo’Nique to Jeremy Renner to Maggie Gyllenhaal to the casts of Up in the Air, An Education and The Last Station. Last year was a crowded tackle box, with obvious films like Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, the offensively maudlin The Reader and even the somewhat decent winner Slumdog Millionaire usurping far stronger films such as The Dark Knight and Wall-E due to the Academy’s prejudice against superhero/action films and animation.

This year, it seemed like the good films got their due in the way of nominations, much less wins, and Avatar’s over-hype was thankfully rectified at the last minute. The only snubs this year were for Best Picture candidates like Star Trek and Invictus, and in a year where the category was expanded to include 10 films, having too many worthy contenders could hardly be a bad thing. Need further proof? The only noteworthy film to make a showing at the Raspberry awards this year was the Transformers sequel. That might be, as Ridley Scott tried to say once, indication of a good year.