'Birdman' takes home best picture at Oscars
LOS ANGELES — “Birdman” has won the Academy Award for best picture.
The film, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who also won best director, stars Michael Keaton as an aging superhero movie star suffering an identity crisis and seeking redemption by mounting a serious Broadway play. It's been hailed for its ensemble cast and its virtuosic camera work, which gives the sensation that the whole movie is shot in one continuous take.
Eddie Redmayne won 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.
It was the first Oscar for Redmayne, 33, who also won the Golden Globe in January.
Julianne Moore won for best actress for “Still Alice.”
Moore gives a nuanced and heart-rending portrayal of a vibrant, ambitious Columbia University professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease in the film by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland.
It was the first Oscar for Moore, 54, in five acting nominations. She also won the Golden Globe in January.
Patricia Arquette and J.K. Simmons won supporting acting awards Sunday at a stormy but buoyant Oscars that was heavy on song-and-dance, occasionally lacking in clothes and animated by a passionate stand for women's rights.
Accepting the Academy Award for best supporting actress she was widely expect to win, Arquette added a political burst to a ceremony otherwise happy to keep it light.
“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 Theatre, perhaps the loudest coming from a fellow supporting-actress nominee who Arquette bested: Meryl Streep.
Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris wasted no time kicking off a stormy 87th Academy Awards and conceding the ceremony's much-discussed lack of diversity.
“Tonight we honor Hollywood's best and whitest — I mean brightest,” Harris said before the star-studded crowd. All of this year's acting nominees are white, a ratio that led some to push for a boycott of the broadcast.
The night's first Oscar went to Simmons, a career character actor widely acclaimed for one of his biggest parts: a drill sergeant of a jazz instructor in the indie “Whiplash.” Simmons fittingly accepted his supporting acting Oscar with some straightforward advice, urging: “Call your mom. Call your dad.”
Backstage, Simmons, known to many from various bit parts or his insurance commercials, recalled a long road as a professional actor that began decades ago in regional theater in Montana.
“Maybe more people saw me tonight than see me in the commercials,” said Simmons.
Most of Sunday's early awards went as expected, though Disney's “Big Hero 6” pulled off something of an upset in the best animated feature category, besting DreamWorks' favored “How to Train Your Dragon 2.”
Two of the night's early awards went to Wes Anderson's “The Grand Budapest Hotel”: costume design, and makeup and styling. The European caper — released back around last year's Academy Awards — could be the night's unlikely leader in trophies, rewarding the hand-made craft of Anderson's latest confection.
The black-and-white Polish film “Ida” took best foreign language film, marking the first such win for Poland despite a rich cinema history. Director Pawel Pawlikowski charmed the audience with a bemused acceptance speech that ran drastically over his allotted time.
Pawlikowski remarked on having made a quiet film of contemplation about withdrawing from the world, “and here we are at the epicenter of noise and attention. It's fantastic. Life is full of surprises.”
Several of this year's biggest box-office hit nominees — Clint Eastwood's Iraq war drama “American Sniper” and Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic “Interstellar” — had to settle for single wins in technical categories. “Interstellar” won for visual effects, while “American Sniper” — far and away the most widely seen of the mostly independent best-picture nominee — took the best sound editing award.
Harris' opening quickly segued into a song-and-dance routine that celebrated a love for movies, complete with a villain to his sunny outlook in Jack Black. The comedian jumped on stage to counter that Hollywood movies weren't so fabulous: “Opening with lots of zeroes, all we get is superheroes.”
“After 'Fifty Shades of Grey,”' Black added, referring to the weekend's top box office draw, “they'll all have leather whips.”
Harris, a frequent Tony Awards host, struck a chipper tone, while slyly mocking the Oscars or parodying Michael Keaton's half-naked scene in “Birdman.”
The $160,000 gift bags for attendees, Harris said, came with “an armored car ride to safety when the revolution comes.” The performance by Andy Samberg's Lonely Island of the Oscar-nominated song “Everything Is Awesome” from “The Lego Movie,” let some live out their Oscar dreams, handing out golden Lego statuettes to Oprah Winfrey and Steve Carell.
Hard showers fell on the red carpet as guests arrived at the ceremony, as workers dispensed pink towels for soggy celebrities. One former Oscar nominee, Viola Davis, said on her way into the ceremony that Hollywood's diversity problems run deeper than the Oscars.
“You have to greenlight more stories that include people of color,” said Davis, asked about how to improve diversity in Hollywood. “You can't get nominated for anything you're not in.”