I won't deny that Hurt Locker sounds like a good film, but really... its not exactly groundbreaking or particularly special. Its another war film.
Fair enough, but the Oscars are not intended to honor "groundbreaking" films. Otherwise, to be honest, most of the winners would indeed be art house films no one has ever seen because most of the innovation goes on in that venue.
The Oscars (in theory - because anything with a voting system is a popularity contest to a degree) are supposed to honor excellence in either a particular field, or a "whole enchilada" situation for Best Picture. "It's another war film". Perhaps, but it may have been another war film with outstanding ensemble performances, great lines of dialogue, emotional impact, originality (hey, anyone who thinks Avatar is original...), pretty pictures, good costumes, etc. The fact it's just another war film -- frankly a lot of people myself included consider Avatar to be just another SF film, albeit one with more pretty pictures than the average.
And honestly I think that's all it will ever be... another Iraqi/Afghanistan war film. In 10 years no one will care about the Hurt Locker. It'll just be another one of those films that people go "oh yeah it won Academy Award for Best something or other... " and they'll probably confuse it with Saving Private Ryan or Blackhawk Down or one of the Matt Damon films.
If you really think Saving Private Ryan is being mistaken for Blackhawk Down, clearly the genre is of no interest. The same could be said for Annie Hall, It Happened One Night, Marty, Chicago and the dozens of Best Picture winners who, to somebody, is "just another" comedy, drama, musical, etc...*
As for the technical awards... why? I mean... why? When its paired up next to stuff like Avatar or Star Trek and a war film gets best mixing or editing or something... WHY? Gee like we haven't heard explosions and war sounds in a movie before. But all the hard work guys like Ben Burtt and whoever did Avatar's stuff put into the movies, making sounds for things that don't exist in real life... and they're snubbed. But oh hey let's give it to the guys who mixed sounds that exist in real life and anyone with a good recording package can create... lets give it to them. They're the 'true artists'.
Clearly spoken by somebody who is not in the industry and who does not understand what goes into sound and editing and all of that. I'm not in the industry either, and occasionally I do wonder why you'll see Oscars for, say, best costumes given to films in which everyone wears suits and ties or cowboy outfits that look like they were bought off the rack at Wal-Mart. Or make-up for some unremarkable modern-day drama. What we don't know is that the people behind Hurt Locker's sound, say, might have gone beyond the call of duty to create the sound scape, and that an educated ear listening to the sound mix might go "holy s*it!" and just go "meh" to something like Avatar or Star Trek. To say that one group of people are "true artists" and one group is not is like someone trying to argue that Da Vinci was a true artist and Picasso was not. And vice versa.
The fact is, Avatar may be the biggest movie in history. But that does not make it the best movie in history, or even the best movie of 2009. If you feel box office is a 100% accurate arbiter of a film's quality, then you have to take into account the fact that The Tooth Fairy last I heard was still in the Top 10 nearly 2 months after it was released...
Alex
* I know Saving Private Ryan didn't win Best Picture. A comedy, Shakespeare in Love did. I'm sure someone griped about Shakespeare being "just another comedy", too.
). 
