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‘The King’s Speech’ takes Oscar crown
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
Actress Melissa Leo accepts the Oscar for best actress in a supporting role for "The Fighter" at the 83rd Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
Natalie Portman accepts the Oscar for best performance by an actress in a leading role for "Black Swan" at the 83rd Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.
Partial list of 83rd annual Oscar winners:
Best picture: “The King’s Speech.”
lead actor: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech.”
lead actress: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan.”
Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter.”
Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, “The Fighter.”
Director: Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech.”
Original Song: “We Belong Together” from “Toy Story 3,” Randy Newman.
Original Score: “The Social Network,” Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network.”
Original Screenplay: David Seidler, “The King’s Speech.”
Art Direction: “Alice in Wonderland.”
Cinematography: “Inception.”
Animated Short Film: “The Lost Thing.”
Animated Feature Film: “Toy Story 3.”
Foreign Language: “In a Better World,” Denmark.
Sound Mixing: “Inception.”
Sound Editing: “Inception.”
Makeup: “The Wolfman.”
Costume Design: “Alice in Wonderland.”
Documentary (short subject): “Strangers No More.”
Live Action Short Film: “God of Love.”
Documentary Feature: “Inside Job.”
Visual Effects: “Inception.”
Film Editing: “The Social Network.”
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES
“The King’s Speech” has been crowned best picture at an Academy Awards ceremony as precise as a state coronation, the monarchy drama leading as expected with four Oscars and predictable favorites claiming acting honors.
Colin Firth as stammering British ruler George VI in “The King’s Speech” earned the best-actor prize Sunday, while Natalie Portman won best actress as a delusional ballerina in “Black Swan.”
The boxing drama “The Fighter” claimed both supporting-acting honors, for Christian Bale as a boxer-turned-drug-abuser and Melissa Leo as a boxing clan’s domineering matriarch.
“The King’s Speech” also won the directing prize for Tom Hooper and the original-screenplay Oscar for David Seidler, a boyhood stutterer himself.
It was Portman’s first win in two nominations and follows her supporting actress nomination for “Closer,” which was made in 2004.
Portman, 29, who lost 20 pounds in the year she prepared for the film, wore a deep purple off-the-shoulders dress on the red carpet, to accommodate her growing baby bump.
In December, Portman and her fianc , Benjamin Millepied, the choreographer of “Black Swan,” announced that she was pregnant. They met on the set of the film, a psychological thriller that verges into horror territory, directed by Darren Aronofsky.
Tom Hooper won the best-director Academy Award for “The King’s Speech.”
Network censors bleeped Leo for dropping the F-word during her speech. Backstage, she jokingly conceded it was “probably a very inappropriate place to use that particular word.”
Bale joked that he was keeping his language clean.
“Melissa, I’m not going to drop the F-bomb like she did,” Bale said. “I’ve done that plenty of times before.”
But the Oscars, being a global affair, were telecast elsewhere in the world with Leo’s words uncensored. Viewers who watched the show on Star Movies, a major channel available throughout Asia, heard the F-word loud and clear.
Hooper, a relative big-screen newcomer best known for classy TV drama, took the industry’s top filmmaking prize Sunday over Hollywood veteran David Fincher, who had been a strong prospect for his Facebook drama “The Social Network.”
“Thank you to my wonderful actors, the triangle of man-love which is Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and me. I’m only here because of you guys,” Hooper said, referring to his film’s male stars.
The Oscar for adapted screenplay went to Aaron Sorkin for “The Social Network,” a chronicle of the birth of Facebook based on Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires.” “The Social Network” also won for musical score for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and for film editing.
The show opened with co-hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco inserted into a montage of scenes from best-picture nominees, built as a series of dream sequences reminiscent of “Inception.” The footage included such guests as Morgan Freeman and last year’s Oscar co-host, Alec Baldwin.
Franco started off telling Hathaway how beautiful she looked. Hathaway shot back, “You look very appealing to a younger demographic, as well.”