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‘The Artist’ earns best-picture, lead-actor Oscars

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Published : Feb. 27, 2012 - 14:31


Best Actress in a Leading Role Meryl Streep and Best Actor in a Leading Role Jean Dujardin celebrate their Oscars in the press room at the 84th Annual Academy Awards on Sunday in Hollywood, California. (AFP-Yonhap News)




“The Artist” won five Academy Awards on Sunday including best picture, becoming the first silent film to triumph at Hollywood’s highest honors since the original Oscar ceremony 83 years ago.

Among other prizes for the black-and-white comic melodrama were best actor for Jean Dujardin and director for Michel Hazanavicius.

The other top Oscars went to Meryl Streep as best actress for “The Iron Lady,” Octavia Spencer as supporting actress for “The Help” and Christopher Plummer as supporting actor for “Beginners.”

“The Artist” is the first silent winner since the World War I saga “Wings” was named outstanding picture at the first Oscars in 1929 had a silent film earned the top prize.

“I am the happiest director in the world,” Havanavicius said, thanking the cast, crew and canine co-star Uggie. “I also want to thank the financier, the crazy person who put money in the movie.”

The win was Streep’s first Oscar in 29 years, since she won best actress for “Sophie’s Choice.” She had lost 13 times in a row since then. Streep also has a supporting-actress Oscar for 1979’s “Kramer vs. Kramer.”

“When they called my name, I had this feeling I could hear half of America go, `Oh, no, why her again?’ But whatever,” Streep said, laughing.

“I really understand I’ll never be up here again. I really want to think all my colleagues, my friends. I look out here and I see my life before my eyes, my old friends, my new friends. Really, this is such a great honor but the think that counts the most with me is the friendship and the love and the sheer job we’ve shared making moves together.”

Streep is only the fifth performer to receive three Oscars. Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman and Walter Brennan all earned three, while Katharine Hepburn won four.

The 82-year-old Plummer became the oldest acting winner ever for his role as an elderly widower who comes out as gay in “Beginners.”

“You’re only two years older than me, darling,” Plummer said, addressing his Oscar statue in this 84th year of the awards. “Where have you been all my life? I have a confession to make. When I first emerged from my mother’s womb, I was already rehearsing my Oscar speech.”

The previous oldest winner was best-actress recipient Jessica Tandy for “Driving Miss Daisy,” at age 80.

Completing an awards-season blitz that took her from Hollywood bit player to star, Spencer won for her role in “The Help” as a headstrong black maid whose willful ways continually land her in trouble with white employers in 1960s Mississippi.

Spencer wept throughout her breathless speech, in which she apologized between laughing and crying for running a bit long on her time limit.

“Thank you, academy, for putting me with the hottest guy in the room,” Spencer said, referring to last year’s supporting-actor winner Christian Bale, who presented her Oscar.

Dujardin became the first Frenchman to win an acting Oscar. French actresses have won before, including Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche.

“Oh, thank you. Oui. I love your country!” said Dujardin, who plays George Valentin, a silent-film superstar fallen on hard times as the sound era takes over. If George Valentin could speak, Dujardin said, “he’d say ... `Merci beaucoup, formidable!”‘

Claiming Hollywood’s top-filmmaking honor completes Hazanavicius’ sudden rise from popular movie-maker back home in France to internationally celebrated director.

Hazanavicius had come in as the favorite after winning at the Directors Guild of America Awards, whose recipient almost always goes on to claim the Oscar.

The win is even more impressive given the type of film Hazanavicius made, a black-and-white silent movie that was a throwback to the early decades of cinema. Other than Charles Chaplin, who continued to make silent films into the 1930s, and Mel Brooks, who scored a hit with the 1976 comedy “Silent Movie,” few people have tried it since talking pictures took over in the late 1920s.

The only other filmmaker from France to win the directing Oscar is “The Pianist” creator Roman Polanski, who was born in France, moved to Poland as a child and has lived in France since fleeing Hollywood in the 1970s on charges he had sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Hazanavicius, known in his home country for the “OSS 117” spy comedies but virtually unheard of in Hollywood previously, won a prize that eluded half a dozen of France’s most-esteemed filmmakers, including Jean Renoir, Francois Truffaut and Louis Malle, who all were nominated for directing Oscars but never won.

Martin Scorsese’s Paris adventure “Hugo” won five Oscars, including the first two prizes of the night, for cinematography and art direction. It also won for visual effects, sound mixing and sound editing.

The visual-effects prize had been the last chance for the “Harry Potter” franchise to win an Oscar. The finale, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” had been nominated for visual effects and two other Oscars but lost all three. Previous “Harry Potter” installments had lost on all nine of their nominations.

The teen wizard may never have struck Oscar gold, but he has a consolation prize: $7.7 billion at the box office worldwide, including $1.3 billion from “Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” last year’s top-grossing movie.

“And yet they only paid 14 percent income tax,” Oscar host Billy Crystal joked about the “Potter” franchise.

Another beloved big-screen bunch, the Muppets, finally got their due at the Oscars. “The Muppets” earned the best-song award for “Man or Muppet,” the sweet comic duet sung by Jason Segel and his Muppet brother in the film, the first big-screen adventure in 12 years for Kermit the frog and company.

Earlier Muppet flicks had been nominated for four music Oscars but lost each time, including the song prize for “The Rainbow Connection,” Kermit’s signature tune from 1979’s “The Muppet Movie.”

“I grew up in New Zealand watching the Muppets on TV. I never dreamed I’d get to work with them,” said “Man or Muppet” writer Bret McKenzie of the musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords,” who joked about meeting Kermit for the first time. “Like many stars here tonight, he’s a lot shorter in real life.”

Filmmaker Alexander Payne picked up his second writing Oscar, sharing the adapted-screenplay prize for the Hawaiian family drama “The Descendants” with co-writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. Payne, who also directed “The Descendants,” previously won the same award for “Sideways.”

Payne said he brought along his mother from Omaha to the Oscars, and that she had demanded a shout-out if he made it onstage.

“She made me promise that if I ever won another Oscar I had to dedicate it to her just like Javier Bardem did with his Oscar. So mom, this one’s for you. Thank you for letting me skip nursery school so we could go to the movies.”

Woody Allen earned his first Oscar in 25 years, winning for original screenplay for the romantic fantasy “Midnight in Paris,” his biggest hit in decades. It’s the fourth Oscar for Allen, who won for directing and screenplay on his 1977 best-picture winner “Annie Hall” and for screenplay on 1986’s “Hannah and Her Sisters.”

Allen also is the record-holder for writing nominations with 15, and his three writing Oscars ties the record shared by Charles Brackett, Paddy Chayefsky, Francis Ford Coppola and Billy Wilder.

No fan of awards shows, Allen predictably skipped Sunday’s ceremony, where he also was up for best director and “Midnight in Paris” was competing for best picture.

Best-picture front-runner “The Artist,” which ran second to “Hugo” with 10 nominations, won two Oscars, for musical score and costume design.

“Rango,” with Johnny Depp providing the voice of a desert lizard that becomes a hero to a parched Western town, won for best animated feature.

“Someone asked me if this film was for kids, and I don’t know. But it was certainly created by a bunch of grown-ups acting like children,” said “Rango” director Gore Verbinski, who made the first three of Depp’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies.

“Undefeated,” a portrait of an underdog high school football team, won for feature documentary.

Crystal got the show off to a lively start with a star-laden montage in which he hangs out with Justin Bieber and gets a nice wet kiss from George Clooney.

Back as Oscar host for the first time in eight years, Crystal also did his signature introduction of the best-picture nominees with a goofy song medley.

Before his monologue, Crystal appeared in a collection of clips inserting him in scenes from key nominees. The montage included re-creations from some 2011 films featuring Tom Cruise of “Mission: Impossible _ Ghost Protocol” and Clooney’s best-picture contender “The Descendants,” with the actor planting a kiss on Crystal.

Spoofing a scene from nominee “Midnight in Paris,” Bieber told Crystal he was there to bring in the 18-to-24-year-old demographic for the 63-year-old host.

Crystal’s return as host seemed appropriate on a night that had Hollywood looking back fondly on more than a century of cinema history.

The top two nominees _ “Hugo” and “The Artist” _ are both love songs to early cinema.

Add the Marilyn Monroe tale “My Week with Marilyn” _ which earned Michelle Williams a best-actress nomination as the Hollywood’s greatest sex goddess and Kenneth Branagh a supporting-actor nomination as Oscar winner Laurence Olivier _ and the show’s producers had a ready-made script for a night of fond recollection and backslapping about show business. (AP)

 


'아티스트', 아카데미 작품상 등 5관왕


미셸 하자나비시우스 감독의 흑백 무성영화 '아 티스트'가 26일(현시시간) 열린 제84회 아카데미시상식에서 작품상•감독상•남우주 연상•의상상•작곡상 등 5관왕에 올랐다.

또한 경합이 치열했던 남녀 주연상은 '아티스트'의 장 뒤자르댕과 '철의 여인'의 메릴 스트립이 각각 차지했다.

'비기너스'의 크리스토퍼 플러머와 '헬프'의 옥타비아 스펜서는 각각 남녀 조연 상을 안았다.

올해 82세인 크리스토퍼 플러머는 역대 아카데미 최고령 수상자로 기록됐다.

작품상과 남녀주연상, 남녀조연상은 한달 전 열린 골든글로브 시상식의 결과와 일치했다. 

올해 11개 부문에 후보로 올랐던 마틴 스코세이지 감독의 3D 영화 '휴고'도 촬영상•시각효과상•미술상•음향편집상•음향상 등 5관왕에 올랐다. 그러나 주요 부 문 수상에는 실패했다.

외국어 영화상은 이란 아쉬가르 파르하디 감독의 '씨민과 나데르의 별거(A Separation)'에게 돌아갔다. 작년 베를린국제영화제에서 금곰상을 받은 이 영화 역시 지 난달 골든글로브 외국어 영화상 수상작이다.

배우 겸 작가, 감독으로 활동하는 예순넷의 빌리 크리스탈이 사회를 맡아 미국 로스앤젤레스 할리우드 코닥극장에서 열린 올해 아카데미시상식의 테마는 '영화의 역사'였다.

작품상, 감독상, 주연상 등 주요부문에서 경합을 벌인 '아티스트'와 '휴고'가 모두 영화에 관한 영화라는 점, 특히 20세기 초반 미국 영화계를 배경으로 하고 있다는 점에서 그렇다.

또한 여우주연상을 받은 메릴 스트립이 아카데미에 역대 최다인 열일곱 번째로 후보에 올라 세 번째로 상을 가져간 점, 지난 수십년간 배우로 활동했던 82세의  크 리스토퍼 플러머가 역대 최고령 수상자로 이름을 올렸다는 점도 보조를 맞췄다. 

사회자 역시 이날의 테마와 잘 어울렸다. 지금껏 아홉차례나 아카데미 시상식을 진행하며 특유의 재치있는 입담과 매너를 과시했던 빌리 크리스털은 2004년 이후 8년 만에 아카데미 시상식 사회자로 돌아와 잔치 분위기를 돋웠다.

이런 분위기에 맞게 이날 시상식에서는 영화의 역사를 소재로 한 '태양의 서커스팀'의 현란한 공연이 펼쳐졌고, 수상자들의 수상 소감도 할리우드에서 보낸 오랜 시간들을 반추하는 내용이 주를 이뤘다.

한편, 시상식에서는 얼마 전 숨진 팝스타 휘트니 휴스턴을 추모하는 시간도 마련됐다.

   

    다음은 주요부문 수상자(작) 목록

    ▲작품상=아티스트

    ▲감독상=미셸 하자나비시우스(아티스트)

    ▲남우주연상=장 뒤자르댕(아티스트)

    ▲여우주연상=메릴 스트립(철의 여인)

    ▲남우조연상=크리스토퍼 플로머(비기너스)

    ▲여우조연상=옥타비아 스펜서(헬프)

    ▲각본상=우디 앨런(미드나잇 인 파리)

    ▲각색상=알랙산더 페인(디센던트)

    ▲단편영화상=쇼어

    ▲장편애니메이션상=랭고

    ▲단편애니메이션상=미스터 레스모어의 환상적인 책 여행   

    ▲장편다큐멘터리상=언디피티드

    ▲단편다큐멘터리상=세이빙 페이스

    ▲작곡상=아티스트

    ▲주제가상=더 머펫

    ▲평생공로상=오프라 윈프리•제임스 얼 존스•딕 스미스

(연합뉴스)


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