OSCAR GLOW IN TINSELTOWN
Winning smiles
Ben Affleck accepts the best picture Oscar for Argo — a dramatization of the 1980 CIA-Canadian operation to extract six U.S. diplomats out of revolutionary Iran — during the Academy Awards Sunday night in Los Angeles.
Argo has won the Academy Award for best picture. This is only the second instance in modern times a film won best picture without a directing nomination. The last was 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy.
Jennifer Lawrence has won her first Oscar, winning best actress for her role as a young widow in Silver Linings Playbook.
Lawrence, 22, was also nominated for Winter’s Bone in 2011.
Daniel Day-Lewis won the award for best actor for his exactingly authentic performance as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s historical drama.
He’s the first to ever win the best actor Oscar three times. He’s been nominated five times, winning for My Left Foot in 1990 and There Will Be Blood in 2008.
Christoph Waltz really owes Quentin Tarantino. Waltz won his second supporting actor Academy Award on Sunday for a Tarantino film, this time as a genteel bounty hunter in the slave-revenge saga Django Unchained.
Waltz thanked Tarantino and also offered gracious thanks to his supporting actor competitors, who included two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro and Oscar recipient Tommy Lee Jones, who had been considered a slim favourite over Waltz for the prize.
Anne Hathaway, meanwhile, has gone from propping up leaden sidekick James Franco at the Academy Awards to hefting a golden statue of her own with a supporting actress Oscar for her role in Les Miserables.
“It came true,” Hathaway said, a reference to her character’s song I Dreamed a Dream. “I must thank (her co-star) Hugh Jackman.”
The foreign-language prize went to Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s old-age love story Amour, which had been a major surprise with five nominations, including picture, director and original screenplay for Haneke and best actress for Emmanuelle Riva, who turned 86 on Sunday and would be the oldest acting winner ever.
The Scottish adventure Brave, from Disney’s Pixar Animation unit, was named best animated feature. Pixar films have won seven of the 12 Oscars since the category was added.
The upbeat musical portrait Searching for Sugar Man took the documentary feature prize. It follows the quest of two South African fans to discover the fate of acclaimed but obscure singersongwriter Sixto Rodriguez, who dropped out of sight after two albums in the 1970s.
Oscar host Seth MacFarlane opened with a mildly edgy monologue that offered the usual polite jabs at the academy, the stars and the industry. He took a poke at academy voters over the snub of Ben Affleck, who missed out on a directing nomination for best-picture favourite Argo, a thriller about the CIA’s plot to rescue six Americans during the Iranian hostage crisis.
“The story was so top secret that the film’s director is unknown to the academy,” MacFarlane said. “They know they screwed up. Ben, it’s not your fault.”
William Shatner made a guest appearance as his Star Trek character Capt. James Kirk, appearing on a giant screen above the stage during MacFarlane’s monologue, saying he came back in time to stop the host from ruining the Oscars.
Canadians were well represented at the ceremony. Jim Erickson of Salt Spring Island, B.C., and colleague Rick Carter won an Academy Award for production design for their work on Lincoln.
Guillaume Rocheron of Vancouver shared an Oscar for best visual effects for the dazzling Life of Pi.
Toronto composer Mychael Danna has won an Oscar for best original score for his work on Life of Pi.
In a surprise turn, director Ang Lee won as best director for Life of Pi, beating presumed front-runner Steven Spielberg for Lincoln.
Adele’s Skyfall won for best original song, a first for a James Bond theme.
While 007 themes have long been a beloved movie tradition, they’ve never before won an Oscar. Three previous Bond tunes were nominated: For Your Eyes Only, Nobody Does It Better, and Live and Let Die.
Fans had pondered how far MacFarlane, the impudent creator of Family Guy, might push the normally prim and proper Oscars. The answer was, not that far. MacFarlane was generally polite and respectful, showcasing his charm, wit and vocal gifts.
He did press his luck on an Abraham Lincoln joke, noting Raymond Massey preceded Lincoln star Daniel Day-Lewis as an Oscar nominee for 1940’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois.
“I would argue that the actor who really got inside Lincoln’s head was John Wilkes Booth,” MacFarlane wisecracked, earning some groans from the crowd, to which he said: “A hundred and 50 years later, and it’s still too soon?”