Today, inside 'The Hurt Locker' chronicles (TW, ENV, LAT)

By Nancy Tartaglione

With a mere three days to go before the Oscars, and the continuing shake-up surrounding Best Picture nominee, "The Hurt Locker," following is a round-up of the top stories concerning the film today.

Following the recent revelations that producer Nicolas Chartier's email campaign urging friends to help drum up Academy support for "The Hurt Locker," over that "$500M film," had resulted in his being banned from the ceremony (he will get a party thrown in his honor, however) and the news of a lawsuit engineered by an Iraq War vet claiming identity theft, The Wrap takes a look at the potential fall-out (including from a Los Angeles Times story in which veterans and current soldiers criticized the film for its inaccuracies) as regards the Oscars.

Noting that criticism towards a Best Picture frontrunner is nothing new - see Ron Howard's "A Beautiful Mind" - it is interesting, as The Wrap points out, that the lawsuit was actually announced 40 minutes after the Oscar polls closed on Tuesday. The theory is why would someone seeking damages want to endanger the film's chances of winning. As TW notes, "an Oscar-winning 'Hurt Locker' is a more profitable legal target. Or maybe they just want to appear to take the high road."

Meanwhile, the Independent Spirit Awards are also this weekend although "Locker," the most honored independent film of 2009, is not eligible for contention.

The Envelope explains a rule in the organization's bylaws that allows films that appear at major film festivals to be considered for nominations even if they haven't been formally released.

Spirits committee members saw the movie at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival even before it was picked up for distribution by Summit and gave it a couple of nominations at last year's Spirits, none of which it won.

Back to the lawsuit, The Los Angeles Times has picked up on a different Nicolas Chartier email which it calls a "curious tidbit" emerging from Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver's claims of defamation, invasion of privacy and other offenses against "The Hurt Locker."

In the purported Chartier email, the producer responds to a lawyer for Sarver, who was forwarding correspondence between the production and the soldier. It can be found here.

Finally, Playboy has re-published the Mark Boal story that inspired the film, "The Man in the Bomb Suit."