The film is based on screenwriter Mark Boal's first-hand experiences gathered whilst embedded with a bomb unit in Iraq.

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Jessica Chastain will win the Oscar for Best Actress, and Mark Boal will probably win for Best Original Screenplay.

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Best Original Screenplay nominees are: Flight (John Gatins), Zero Dark Thirty (Mark Boal), Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino), Amour (Michael Haneke), and Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola).

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Thursday the Academy announced it would allow all four named producers on The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shaprio) to accept should the film win.

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Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal - who won Oscars in 2010 for The Hurt Locker - said last month the film depicted "a variety of controversial practices and intelligence methods".

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Screenwriter Mark Boal also deserves praise for not overtelling his story, for trusting that the power of its meaning is deeper and depends on audiences to see the events and understand the narrative instinctively.

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Meantime, Senator Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has ordered an investigation into whether the CIA provided Ms. Bigelow and her screenwriter Mark Boal with "inappropriate" access to the agency during the making of the film.

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The Obama administration, it seems, has granted an unusual amount of access to the team behind The Hurt Locker (writer Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow) for an upcoming campaign-season film about the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.

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Written by Mark Boal.

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