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But in a break from recent years, Oscar voters also found a way to take care of a wide variety of movies, especially Life of Pi, which won four trophies, including the best director honour for Ang Lee. Les Misérables joined Argo in taking home three awards, and Django Unchained was honoured with two, including one for Quentin Tarantino for the best original screenplay.
“I want to thank Canada,” Affleck said in a rapid-fire speech, a reference to that country’s heroics in saving the diplomats who were the subject of his movie. Michelle Obama, appearing via satellite from the White House, helped Jack Nicholson present the award. (85th Academy Awards)
Still, Affleck was not nominated by the Academy for his directing, making Argo the first film to win the best picture award without an accompanying nomination for its director since 1990, when Driving Miss Daisy won the best-picture Oscar. When Affleck failed to receive a nomination for directing that helped rally support for Argo, which picked up a rash of honours on the awards circuit. It also won Oscars for best adapted screenplay (for Chris Terrio) and best editing (for William Goldenberg).
Lincoln, considered the early Oscar front-runner, seemed to overreach by getting Bill Clinton to introduce a clip at the Golden Globes last month. Lincoln, the most nominated film going into the night with 12 nods, left with two statuettes, including one for Daniel Day-Lewis as the best actor, his third in that category.
A flustered Jennifer Lawrence stumbled as she ascended the stairs en route to accept the Oscar for best actress for Silver Linings Playbook, but recovered with a smile before saying “this is nuts.”
Seth MacFarlane, this year’s host, opened the 85th annual Academy Awards with a round of risky humour more akin to the Golden Globes, delivering a monologue that mocked himself as “the worst Oscar host ever” and joining with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles to perform a song-and-dance homage to topless scenes by female stars.
The Oscars also seemed to emulate the Grammy Awards, with more emphasis on centerpiece performances — by Adele, Shirley Bassey and Barbra Streisand, among others — than on the presentation of awards. The much-advertised musical tribute, which ran for 11 minutes, had it both ways, mixing clips from films with live performances by Catherine Zeta-Jones from Chicago, Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls and the cast of Les Misérables.
The producers made up time by hustling awards winners off the stage, doing it musically with a riff from Jaws in at least one case. Most winners seemed to adhere to the admonishments made by producers before the show to avoid reading prepared remarks.
The awards presentation at the Dolby Theater here unfolded pretty much as expected, with voters spreading their awards across a variety of pictures. Voters even found a way to honour Anna Karenina, which drew shrugs from most critics and ticket buyers but nonetheless won the best costume design.
Anne Hathaway won best supporting actress for her role as an emaciated prostitute in Les Misérables. “It came true,” she said softly after climbing onstage.
Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor for Django Unchained, something of a surprise given the Weinstein Company’s hard push for Robert De Niro for his role in Silver Linings Playbook.
“We participated in a hero’s journey, the hero here being Quentin,” Waltz said.
There was a rare tie in the sound editing category, with Oscars going to Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall. The last time there was a tie was in 1994 in the live-action-short category, according to an Academy librarian. It was the only award for Zero Dark Thirty, which was once a leading best picture contender but fizzled under intense criticism for its depiction of the role of torture in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Best animated feature went to Pixar’s Brave, which beat its corporate sibling, Wreck-It Ralph, from Walt Disney Animation. Disney’s cartoon studio did win best animated short, for Paperman.
Best documentary feature went to Searching for Sugar Man, from the first-time director Malik Bendjelloul — the only feel-good documentary in a list that otherwise wrestled with grim problems like the AIDS epidemic and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Michael Haneke’s Amour, about an elderly couple coping with illness and death, won best foreign-language film.
© 2013 The New York Times News Service
