‘Birdman’ sits atop best picture perch

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES

The long take of “Birdman” has stretched all the way to the Academy Awards, where the jazzy, surreal comedy about an actor fleeing his superhero past, took Hollywood’s top honor in a ceremony punctuated by passionate pleas for equality.

In a battle of B-movies for best picture, the Oscars awarded “Birdman” best picture, opting for a movie that epitomizes much of Hollywood — showy, ego-mad, desperate for artistic credibility — over one (“Boyhood”) that prized naturalism and patience. “Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” also won best director for Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, best original screenplay and best cinematography.

“Maybe next year the government will inflict immigration restrictions,” said Innaritu, recalling last year’s best director winner, Alfonso Cuaron. “Two Mexicans in a row. That’s suspicious, I guess.”

Julianne Moore won her first Oscar as best actress for “Still Alice,” and she shined a light on Alzheimer’s disease in her acceptance speech Sunday night.

The 54-year-old actress added an Academy Award to the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild trophies she won earlier for her role as a college linguistics professor who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Eddie Redmayne won the Academy Award for best actor for “The Theory of Everything.”

Redmayne plays the real-life role of physicist Stephen Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neuron disease at the age of 21. The actor has been praised for his skillful depiction of Hawking’s gradual physical decline.

Six of the eight best-picture nominees took awards at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday: Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” for its hand-made craft; “Whiplash” for its pulsating pacing and J.K. Simmons’ drill-sergeant jazz instructor; “Birdman” for its elegant cinematography; “Boyhood” for Patricia Arquette’s moving mother; and “American Sniper” for its war film sound editing; and “Selma” for Common and John Legend’s best song.

Tony Awards veteran Neil Patrick Harris gave the 87th Academy Awards a chipper tone that sought to celebrate Hollywood, while also slyly parodying it. “Tonight we honor Hollywood’s best and whitest — I mean brightest,” he began the night, alluding to the much-discussed lack of diversity in this year’s all-white acting nominees.

It was the first salvo in a night that often reverberated with heartfelt pleas for change.

“To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation,” said Arquette. “We have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once for all. And equal rights for women in the United States of America.”

Cheers erupted throughout the Dolby, perhaps the loudest coming from a fellow supporting-actress nominee who Arquette bested: Meryl Streep. “Made my night,” Streep told Arquette backstage.

Tears streamed down the face of David Oyelowo, who played the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in “Selma” and was famously left out of the best actor nominees, during the rousing performance of the song “Glory” from the film. Immediately afterward, Common and Legend accepted the best song Oscar with a speech that drew a standing ovation.

“We say that ‘Selma’ is now because the struggle for justice is right now,” said Legend. He noted that the Voting Rights Act, whose passage is chronicled in “Selma,” has been drastically scaled down in recent years.