Slumdog Millionaire wins best picture Oscar
February 23, 2009 – 4:09PM
The Mumbai-set love story was the overwhelming favourite for the statuette after recording a virtual clean sweep of awards leading into the Oscars.
The build-up to this year’s ceremony was dominated by the Bollywood-inspired Slumdog, which has swept other awards and was considered the overwhelming favourite for the best picture statuette.
Although period drama The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button started the night with the most nominations, 13 compared with 10 for Slumdog – experts said that Boyle’s film was unbeatable.
“It would be the biggest upset in modern Oscars history to see Slumdog lose,” Pete Hammond, a veteran awards season pundit and Maxim film critic, said.
Pundits say Slumdog has delighted audiences with its rags-to-riches plot about a Mumbai tea boy who rises out from poverty and enters a television quiz show to win millions and be reunited with the love of his life.
Other rivals in the best picture category were Benjamin Button, political drama Frost/Nixon, biopic Milk and Holocaust drama The Reader.
Other winners
■ Sean Penn won best actor for his role in Milk.
■ Late Australian actor Heath Ledger has won the Oscar for best supporting actor. Ledger, nominated in the best supporting actor category for his performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight, was favourite to win.
■ British star Kate Winslet made it sixth time lucky at the Oscars on Sunday, winning the best actress statuette after five previous nominations ended in defeat.
■ Danny Boyle won the best director Oscar on Sunday for his rags-to-riches drama Slumdog Millionaire.
■ Penelope Cruz became the first Spanish actress to win an Academy Award on Sunday, picking up the best supporting Oscar statuette for her performance in the steamy comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
■ Disney-Pixar’s charming tale about the last robot left on planet Earth and his quest for love, Wall-E, has won the Oscar for best animated feature.
■ Australia’s Michael Carlin has missed out on the art direction Oscar for his work on the period drama The Duchess. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s Donald Burt and Victor Zolfo were named the winners.
■ Catherine Martin has continued Australia’s poor early start at the Oscars, bypassed in the costume design category. Martin was nominated for her costume work on the epic Australia, directed by her husband Baz Luhrmann. Englishman Michael O’Connor won for the Keira Knightley period drama, The Duchess.
■ Writer Dustin Lance Black, picking up the Oscar for best original screenplay for Milk, made an impassioned plea for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans.
■ Australian visual effects wizard Ben Snow will also go home empty-handed. Snow was nominated in the visual effects category for his work on the Robert Downey jnr superhero film Iron Man. The Oscar was won by the visual effects team from The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.
■ Australia’s two nominated film editors, Kirk Baxter and Lee Smith, also failed to win. Baxter was nominated for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button while Smith received his nod for The Dark Knight.
The Oscar went to Slumdog Millionaire’s British editor Chris Dickens.
■ Indian composer A.R Rahman won the Oscar for best original score for his work on Slumdog Millionaire. Other nominees included Alexandre Deplat (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button), James Newton Howard (Defiance), Danny Elfman (Milk), Thomas Newman (Wall-E).
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