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Oscars: A ‘Million Dollar’ night!
28th Feb 2005 15.11 IST
By N K Deoshi

Clint Eastwood’s ‘Million Dollar Baby’ emerged triumphant with four Oscars in major categories, while Martin Scorsese’s hopes for a Best Director Oscar were thrashed, even though his movie ‘The Aviator’ won five statuettes in other categories.

The ceremony at the Kodak Theatre began on a high note as Chris Rock took the center-stage and regaled the crowd of over 3000 people with his tongue-in-cheek humor on Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Later, when Sean Penn came to give away the award for the Best actress, he indirectly took on Rock and called Law as “one of the finest actors”.

Million Dollar Baby’s surprise punch starting appearing at the onset of the evening when Morgan Freeman, quite impressively dressed, won the Oscar for his Best Supporting performance in the movie. ‘The Aviator’ also took off on a promising flight and won the statuettes for ‘Best Art Direction’, ‘Costume Design’, ‘Cinematography’, ‘Editing’ and Cate Blanchett walked away with ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for her portrayal of Katherine Hepburn in the movie. But that is all that the ceremony had in store for ‘The Aviator’

As the evening drew on, Eastwood’s female-boxing drama set a firm foot in the ring. Hillary Swank won the Best Actress statuette, Eastwood the ‘Best Director’ and ‘Million Dollar Baby’ got the Best Film, knocking ‘The Aviator’ down from its flight of high expectations.

Clint, who had come with his 90-plus year old mother, was light-humored in his acceptance speech and joked about his “crack geriatrics team” behind the movie, and said “I'm just a kid” compared with 80-year-old director Sidney Lumet, who was honored with Lifetime Achievement earlier in the evening.

As for the Best Actor category, the Oscar, as was expected, went to Jamie Foxx who gave quite an emotional speech. After praising the ‘Ray’ director for “digging out of earth” the legacy of blind musician Ray Charles, he paid a tribute to his late grandmother, who, he said, was his first acting teacher. He reminisced her and said that he still talks to her “in dreams”.

India’s hope for an Academy Award was thrashed after Ashwin Kumar’s short film Little Terrorist failed to get the statuette and lost to ‘Wasp’.

The evening also had a Hispanic flavor with on-stage performances by Antonio Bandares and music legend Carlos Santana. Spanish film ‘The Sea Inside’ won the Oscar for the Best Foreign Film.

Photo: courtesy Associated Press