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‘King’s Speech’ is king of Oscar night | |
| | Colin Firth (L) accepts his Oscar for best performance in a leading role for “The King’s Speech” at the 83rd Academy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday. Natalie Portman accepts her Oscar for best actress for her role in “Black Swan.” SD-Agencies |
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“THE King’s Speech” was crowned best picture Sunday 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, 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.
“I have a feeling my career’s just peaked,” Firth said. “I’m afraid I have to warn you that I’m experiencing stirrings somewhere in the upper abdominals which are threatening to form themselves into dance moves.”
Among those Portman beat was Annette Bening for “The Kids Are All Right.” Bening now has lost all four times she’s been nominated.
“Thank you so much. This is insane, and I truly, sincerely wish that the prize tonight was to get to work with my fellow nominees. I’m so in awe of you,” Portman said.
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. “I’m not going to drop the F-bomb like she did,” he said. “I’ve done that plenty of times before.”
“The Fighter” gave Bale his turn to unleash some demons as Dicky Eklund, a boxer whose career unraveled amid crime and drug abuse. Bale delivers a showy performance full of tics and tremors, bobbing and weaving around the movie’s star and producer, Mark Wahlberg, who plays Eklund’s stolid brother, boxer Micky Ward.
Hooper, a relative big-screen newcomer best known for classy TV drama, took the industry’s top filmmaking prize over Hollywood veteran David Fincher, who had been a strong prospect for his Facebook drama “The Social Network.”
The prize was presented by last year’s winner, Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to earn a directing Oscar.
“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 screenplay win capped a lifelong dream for “King’s Speech” writer Seidler, a boyhood stutterer born in London in 1937, a year after George took the throne. Seidler, who overcame his own stutter at age 16, had long vowed to one day write about the monarch whose fortitude set an example for him in childhood.
Seidler thanked Queen Elizabeth II, daughter of King George, “For not putting me in the Tower of London for using the Melissa Leo F-word.” The film includes two scenes where the king spouts profanity in anger to help force out his syllables.
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 sci-fi blockbuster “Inception,” which came in with eight nominations, tied with “The Kings Speech” with four Oscars, all in technical categories: visual effects, cinematography, sound editing and sound mixing.
“Toy Story 3,” last year’s top-grossing release and a contender for best picture, won the fourth-straight animated-feature Oscar for Disney’s Pixar Animation unit. Pixar has produced six of the 10 Oscar recipients for animation since the category was added, including “Finding Nemo,” “WALL-E” and last year’s winner, “Up.”
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