‘The King’s Speech’ took home the big prize of the night, while Natalie Portman and Colin Firth picked up best acting Oscars.
As expected, Natalie Portman has won Best Actress for “Black Swan.”
In addition to her director Daron Aronofsky, Portman thanked: “Everyone who has ever hired me.”
Tom Hooper picked up Best Director for “The King’s Speech.”
That should kill the chance that “The Social Network” could be headed for an Oscar coup.
The story of the formation of Facebook had been considered too cold to beat out the inspirational story of a speech impaired king. Looks like the prognosticators were right.
With energy flagging, Billy Crystal has been brought on to try to shake some life into Sunday’s Oscar telecast.
“The producers asked me to tell you that we’re running a little long, so here are the nominees for Best Picture,” Crystal joked.
Would that he were serious.
Instead, the eight-time host then introduced a montage of clips from throughout the Academy Awards’ 83 year history.
Aside from Crystal’s guest spot, the biggest surprise thus far has been co-host James Franco in drag. Otherwise, it has been an Oscar show short on upsets.
A victory for “Inside Job” over “Exit Through the Gift Shop” in the Best Documentary category deprived the show of what might have been a moment of excitement. Many had hoped that elusive graffiti star Banksy would use the Oscars to cause artistic mayhem.
Yet an Oscar win for “Social Network” for Best Film Editing held out some promise that the Facebook film might be headed for an upset over the expected winner “The King’s Speech.”
Aside from “The King’s Speech”s’ meager showing in technical categories, the supporting statues were dominated by “The Fighter.”
More From The Wrap: The Full List of Oscar Nominees & Winners
Heavily favored Christian Bale picked up a Best Supporting Actor award for his performance as a drug addicted former boxer in “The Fighter.”
Accepting his statue, Bale poked fun at co-star Melissa Leo, who tested the censors when accepting her own Oscar earlier in the evening.
Also From The Wrap: Fashion, Film & Fun on Oscar’s Red Carpet (slideshow)
“Melissa, I’m not going to drop the F-bomb like she did, I’ve done that plenty before,” Bale said.
The Welsh actor went on to thank director David O. Russell and the real life inspiration for his role Dicky Eklund, before forgetting his wife’s name.
Leo had dominated earlier awards shows, making her obscenity more surprising than her victory.
She won Best Supporting Actress for her role as the tough-talking, big haired mother in “The Fighter.”
“I’m just shaking in my boots here,” Leo said, before putting the telecast’s tape delay to good use by dropping an F-bomb to express her pleasure and shock.
No clear front-runner has emerged on Sunday’s Oscars with statues fairly evenly distributed among the leading Best Picture contenders.
Aaron Sorkin has picked up his first Oscar for chronicling the formation of Facebook in “The Social Network.”
“I wrote this movie, but David Fincher made this movie and he did it with an ungodly artfulness,” Sorkin said.
Its main competition for the top prize, “The King’s Speech” also picked up a writing prize, with David Seidler winning Best Adapted Screenplay.
“I accept on behalf of all the stutterers through out the world. We have a voice thanks to you the Academy,” Seidler said.
As expected, “Toy Story 3” beat out competition from “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Illusionist” to pick up Best Animated Feature.
Rock star Trent Reznor has added Oscar to his list of honors. The Nine Inch Nails frontman and collaborator Atticus Ross won an award for his doleful score for “The Social Network,” beating out Hans Zimmer for “Inception” and Alexandre Desplat for “The King’s Speech.”
In technical categories, Best Art Direction went to “Alice and Wonderland” and “Inception” cinematographer Wally Pfister picked up a statue for his shots of swirling rooms and collapsing dreamscapes.
Earlier in the evening, Anne Hathaway and James Franco kicked off the 83rd annual Academy Awards with a comedic film that saw the actors spliced in clips from Best Picture nominees such as “Inception” and “The Social Network.”
The two youthful hosts were tapped in an effort by the Academy to bring in younger viewers.
“You look very appealing to the younger demographic as well,” Hathaway joked with her co-star at the start of the show.
From the stage, the pair gave shout-outs to their mothers — with Hathaway’s mother reminding her daughter to stand up straight and Franco’s grandmother mooned after Mark Wahlberg.
In the five minute film that started the telecast, last year’s host Alec Baldwin appeared to give the pair advice, but was “incepted” before he could share his wisdom.
Franco and Hathaway are then thrown down the rabbit hole into Baldwin’s dreams. That conceit became an opportunity for the two youthful co-hosts to spar with an onscreen Mark Zuckerberg and Mickey Ward, and meet Jeff Bridges’ Rooster Cogburn in a snow streaked forest.
At stake during Sunday’s show is whether front runner “The King’s Speech,” with its inspirational true story will triumph over underdog and critical favorite “The King’s Speech.”
Likewise, will the Academy complete the coronation of “The King’s Speech” star Colin Firth and “The Black Swan” ingenue Natalie Portman, who have dominated the Golden Globes and critics awards, or opt for a more unconventional choice like Annette Bening or Jesse Eisenberg?
Also in the running for the top prize are the Coen Brothers western remake “True Grit” and real-life boxing drama “The Fighter.”
The remaining six Best Picture nominees are “The Kids Are All Right,” “127 Hours,” “Inception,” “Toy Story 3,” “Black Swan,” and “Winter’s Bone.
Comments are closed.