The Academy Awards:

The Night that makes Legends

The 82nd Academy Awards, honouring the best in film for 2009, was held on Sunday, March 7 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, with actors Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosting the ceremony, and this is an exclusive on it.

We all know that the Academy Awards (popularly known as the Oscars) are the most prestigious awards in the world. Talking of most famous films like Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, Gladiator to old time favourites Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia and Sound of Music all have won the Academy Award for the best film.

It is presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent award ceremonies in the world, it is watched by millions around the world.

The award is an Oscar statuette, made of Gold-plated britannium and takes the shape of a Knight rendered in Art-Deco style holding a crusader’s sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes each represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians.

It is also the oldest award ceremony in the media, and many other award ceremonies such as the Grammy Awards (for music), Golden Globe Awards (all forms of visual media), and Emmy Awards (for television) are often modeled from the Academy and follow the same style.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer studio boss Lois B.Mayer. The very first Academy Award ceremony was held Thursday, May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honour outstanding film achievements of 1927 and 1928.

While James Cameron made box office history this year with his ‘Avatar’ becoming the highest grossing movie ever, taking $ 2 Billion worldwide, his ex-wife Catherine Bigelow made Oscar history by becoming the first female to be the Best Director winner.

Avatar had been widely expected to follow in the footsteps of Cameron’s epic, Titanic, which won 11 Oscars in 1998, but failed to impress the Academy.

As the Best Director award was announced, Cameron patted Bigelow on the back as she was sitting directly in front of him in the auditorium. Bigelow dedicated the award to serving members of the military and said that she hoped she would be the first of many female directors to win best director Oscars.

Aside from picture and director honors, her movie, The Hurt Locker was a all round winner that night, sound mixing and sound editing, original screen play, best production categories en route to collecting a field-leading six Oscars, out of nine chances. The movie was about a US Bomb disposal unit in Iraq. Avatar, relegated to technical wins in the end, bagged Oscars for art direction, visual effects and cinematography

Movie Veteran Jeff Bridges, after years of unsung consistency, finally got what was coming to him, scoring the Oscar for the Best Actor for playing Crazy Heart’s alcoholic country singer in need of redemption. Sandra Bullock, the actress we used to love since ‘Speed’ won the Best Actress for the movie ‘The Blind Side’.

‘The Blind Side’ was an American football drama which follows the story of Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All-American football player and first round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring woman (Bullock) and her family.

Hollywood legend Meryl Streep was nominated for the 16th time but has not won since 1982. Host Steve Martin made a few jokes about her being the most nominated actor ever in Hollywood history.

Actress Mo’Nique received a standing ovation as she collected the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the gritty film ‘Precious,’ which also features Mariah Carey, about an illiterate and pregnant young girl in Brooklyn.

Austrian actor Christoph Waltz cemented his place in Hollywood by winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for ‘Inglourious Basterds’. His role as a sociable fiend of a Nazi helped him beat four Hollywood veterans - Matt Damon for Invictus, Woody Harrelson for The Messenger, Christopher Plummer for The Last Station and Stanley Tucci for The Lovely Bones.

Quentin Tarantino cast the veteran stage and television actor as the prattling, ruthless Jew-hunter Hans Landa in his World War II story. Disney and Pixar production ‘Up’ became significant as one of the two Animatins ever to be nominated for the Best Picture category, after last years’s overwhelming response and numerous nominations for hit animation ‘Wall-E,’ which was contravertially overlooked at the Best Picture nominations. In 1991, Beauty and the Beast was the only other animation nominated for the Best picture.

Another significant win was ‘The Cove’, that won the Oscar for best documentary, and the film was about the annual killing of dolphins in a National Park at Taiji, Wakayama, in Japan from an anti-dolphin hunting campaigner’s point of view. The film claims that 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan every year. The migrating dolphins are herded into a hidden cove where they are netted and brutally slaughtered by means of spears and knives over the side of small fishing boats.

The night was full of laughs as the hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin both were more than capable of entertaining.

Chamari Senanayake