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Controversy, reality reign at Oscars

Crash topples Brokeback Mountain for best picture honor at the 78th annual Academy Awards.

By Steve Persall
Published March 6, 2006

	[Getty Images]
	Philip Seymour Hoffman and Reese Witherspoon won Oscars for their roles in Capote and Walk the Line.
	The Winners
	The scene at the Oscars
	Fashion photo gallery
	The Red Carpet

Hollywood may make its profits on fantasy, but it rewarded controversy and reality at Sunday night's 78th annual Academy Awards.

Crash, a provocative ensemble drama of 36 racially charged hours in Los Angeles, rustled the Oscar away from Brokeback Mountain, the tale of love between two Montana sheep ranchers in the 1960s.

Ang Lee took the best director prize for Brokeback Mountain, which led all films with eight nominations, and had already claimed the dramatic film Golden Globe, the Directors Guild of America prize and the Producers Guild of America award. Of the nine films that had scored that triple play before, eight took the Best Picture Oscar.

The socially conscious slate of best picture nominees also included the historical dramas Good Night, and Good Luck and Munich and the biography Capote.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was named best actor for his starring role in Capote, about groundbreaking author Truman Capote, while Reese Witherspoon took the best actress Oscar for playing country music legend June Carter Cash in the film Walk the Line.

Best supporting actor George Clooney won for his role as a CIA agent in Syriana, a political drama of oil industry and government conspiracies. Rachel Weisz won best supporting actress for The Constant Gardener, in which she played the wife of a British diplomat who becomes involved in illegal pharmaceutical sales in Africa.

Clooney, who also competed in the best director race and shared a best original screenplay nomination with Grant Heslov, both for Good Night, and Good Luck, referred to his activist status in his Oscar acceptance speech.

"I would say that we're a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. It's probably a good thing. We're the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn't really popular. This academy, this group of people, gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar (best supporting actress, Gone With the Wind) in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters.

"I'm proud to be a part of this academy. I'm proud to be a part of this community. I'm proud to be out of touch."

Hoffman, 36, became emotional as his acceptance speech moved from other nominees and collaborators to his mother, who raised four children alone.

"She took me to my first play and stayed up late to watch the NCAA Final Four," he said. "Her passions became my passions. Be proud, Mom, because I'm proud of you. We're here tonight and it's so good."

Weisz, who previously claimed a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award for her Constant Gardener role, thanked her co-star Ralph Fiennes, director Fernando Meirelles and author John le Carre "who wrote this unflinching, angry story and really paid tribute to people who risk their own lives to fight injustice. They're greater men and women than I."

Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong was honored for 2005's sound mixing, sound editing and visual effects, a competition that didn't exist in 1933 when the original version was a hit. Another visual effects nominee, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, won the Oscar for best achievement in makeup.

The year's best foreign language film prize was voted to Tsotsi, a gangland drama from South Africa.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was named the best animated feature, bringing co-director Nick Park his fourth Academy Award. Park previously won with animated short films including two Wallace & Gromit comedies, A Close Shave and The Wrong Trousers.

John Canemaker's autobiographical The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation was voted the best animated short film of 2005. Six Shooter, a dark Irish comedy, won the best live action short film award.

March of the Penguins was named 2005's best documentary feature after earning more money at U.S. box offices ($77.4-million) than any of the best picture nominees to date. A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin was named the year's best documentary short.

Memoirs of a Geisha, nominated for six Academy Awards, was honored for its 1930s Japanese costume design and art direction, as well as its cinematography.

First-time Oscar host Jon Stewart struggled for laughs in his opening monologue, utilizing much of the wit and sarcasm that works on Comedy Central's The Daily Show. He quickly established his role as a Hollywood outsider, noting his role as "fourth male lead in Death to Smoochy. "

Stewart joshed nominees such as Clooney, noting that Good Night, and Good Luck isn't just a movie title, but the phrase "is how Mr. Clooney ends all his dates." He saved his sharpest jabs for the liberals in the room.

"This is the only place to see this many stars without having to donate money to the Democratic Party," Stewart said. "For many of you, this is the first time you've voted for a winner."

Stewart also singled out best director nominee Steven Spielberg for a joke that drew as many gasps as laughs, noting the filmmaker's movies about the Holocaust and the murders of Israeli Olympians. "First Schindler's List, then Munich, " he said. "I think I speak for all Jews when I say: I can't wait to see what happens to us next. Trilogy!"

More entertaining were the show's recorded bits, starting with Billy Crystal and Chris Rock declining to host the program again, too busy sharing a tent, Brokeback Mountain- style. Previous hosts Steve Martin and David Letterman also begged off to humorous effect, and Mel Gibson declined in subtitles, speaking the ancient Maya language used in his upcoming film, Apocalypto. Stewart's hiring was depicted as a dream, bolstered by waking up alongside Halle Berry and then Clooney.

A montage of clips from vintage westerns were shown, set up and edited to suggest the gay themes of Brokeback Mountain aren't new. Stewart's Comedy Central colleague Stephen Colbert provided a bogus expose into Oscar campaign tactics, including amusingly negative attacks on Charlize Theron and Judi Dench.

Five-time best director nominee Robert Altman was honored with an honorary Oscar, introduced by Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin with overlapping dialogue the maverick director installed in American cinema with MASH and McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

The hip-hop crew Three 6 Mafia performed the best original song winner It's Hard out Here for a Pimp from Hustle & Flow.

Sunday's show was slow-moving at times, although it ended up running just less than 31/2 hours, well short of 1999's record 4 hours and 2 minutes. The orchestra struck up music as soon as winners reached the podium. Altman's rambling acceptance speech, tributes to Hollywood history, and violinist Itzhak Perlman's medley of original score nominees padded the process.

Nielsen overnight ratings for Sunday night's ABC network telecast will be announced today. The numbers are expected to rival the 2003 show's estimated 33.1-million Americans viewers when Chicago won the best picture prize. That was the smallest TV audience since 1974.

Box office numbers usually influence the show's television appeal. This year's five best picture nominees grossed less than $250-million combined at U.S. theaters, the least popular group since 1984. The Oscar telecast scored its highest ratings ever in 1998 when an estimated 55.2-million viewers watched Titanic, the all-time U.S. box office champion, dominate the balloting.

--Steve Persall can be reached at 727 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 6, 2006, 05:47:06]