If it were up to China, Avatar would have won the Oscar

The Academy Awards are over and done with - but I'm sure everybody was wondering, what did the Chinese think about it? China Daily movie critic Raymond Zhou did the good deed of tallying their opinions.

It seems that they would have awarded Oscars to actors and actresses they actually know - Chinese people looove Meryl Streep and George Clooney, which I guess means they're clueless about Jeff Bridges (who isn't even mentioned) and Sandra Bullock. It seems like the whole concept of the Strong Southern Woman (Bullock's role in The Blind Side) eluded them, with Zhou needing to compare them to the Northeastern women of China. I'm not sure that's the most apt comparison - Southern women are stereotyped for their hospitality and manners as much as their tough love - but hey, take what you can get, right?

Similarly, for the Best Picture award, many were baffled that Avatar lost out to Hurt Locker, not understanding the Iraqi war film as much more than "Pentagon propaganda." In fact, some were downright ornery about the blue-skinned aliens possibly not winning. As Zhou says, "Most bet on the $2 billion juggernaut for the Best Picture award, and when my fellow guest at Sina.com's Oscar show openly rallied for The Hurt Locker, he instantly received text messages denouncing him."

While Zhou mentions that three foreign film submissions from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong were all shut out from the final nomination group (which gives "little for domestic fans to jump up and down about"), what he doesn't talk about is a movie from China that did make it into the Oscars: a short documentary about the Sichuan Earthquake.

But I suppose that if China's censoring any mention of it, the chances Zhou would be allowed to talk about it in a state newspaper would be pretty low to begin with.

Related: Seems like Youku has a compendium of Oscar clips up for your perusal if you didn't manage to catch a live webstream yesterday morning.