Fury Road was the big victor at this year’s Oscars.
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The night’s biggest shock was undoubtedly the fact that Sylvester Stallone didn’t win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for reprising his Rocky Balboa character in Creed; Stallone, who earned his first nod in 40 years, was considered by many a shoo-in.
Mad Max: Fury Road has won its first award of the night from its 10 nominations – best costume design for Jenny Beavan.
At one point, after Fury Road had won three awards in a row, it became a running joke, with comedian and presenter Louis C.K. quipping, “And the victor for Best Documentary Short is …”
“Revenant’s” Emmanuel Lubezki also kept a streak going, winning his third straight Oscar for cinematography. I’d say that I have had better Oscar watching experiences before but this year was pretty good too.
Streaks, broken and extended, dominated much of the evening, with an expected best actress win to Brie Larson for her breakout performance in the mother-son captive drama “Room” and a best supporting actress win for Swedish actress Alicia Vikander for the transgender pioneer tale “The Danish Girl”. It was for Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight”.
Rock, who hosted despite calls for him to join a boycott, unleashed a fierce monologue – one he apparently rewrote in the wake of the scandal to hold the Academy’s 6,000-plus voting members, overwhelmingly white men, to account.
Noting the lack of black nominees through most of Oscar history, he pointed out that in the ’60s, “Black people did not protest because we had real things to protest at the time”.
The night’s most-awarded film, however, went to neither “Spotlight” nor “The Revenant”.
His view is shared by Gold Coast-based stunt driver Eugene Arensden, who spent six months in Africa working on the film.
“At a simple level, you’re not trying to use dialogue as exposition, you’re using it as part of behaviour, and language itself is distorted,”Miller said in his interview”.
British singer Sam Smith’s theme song for James Bond movie “Spectre” beat Lady Gaga’s sexual assault awareness ballad “Til It Happens to You”.
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Another surprise: while last year’s Best Director victor Alejandro Inarritu won Best Director for The Revenant – becoming the first director in 65 years to win that prize in back-to-back years – the movie itself lost to Spotlight for Best Picture.
