LOS ANGELES (Feb. 23) - Topping off the night with its eighth Oscar win, feel-good underdog 'Slumdog Millionaire' took the top honors at the Academy Awards with a Best Picture win. Other big winners include Sean Penn and Kate Winslet, who took the top acting honors for their respective roles in 'Milk' and 'The Reader,' as well as a posthumous win for Heath Ledger.
The film, which also scored Danny Boyle a Best Director Oscar and won for Best Adapted Screenplay, thrived with its story of hope, love and destiny. Boyle offered warm gratitude to the people of Mumbai. "Just to say to Mumbai, all of you who helped us make the filmand all of those of you who didn't, thank you very much. You dwarfeven this guy," Boyle said, holding up his directing Oscar.
Skip over this contentSkip over this contentThe low-budget production was a merger of India's briskBollywood movie industry, which provided most of the cast and crew,and the global marketing reach of Hollywood, which turned the filminto a commercial smash, said British director Boyle.
"We're Brits, really, trapped in the middle, but it's a lovelytrapped thing," Boyle said backstage. "You can see it's going tohappen more and more. There's all sorts of people going to workthere. The world's shrinking a little bit."
It was a theme Oscar voters embraced through the evening withother key awards honoring films fostering broader understanding andcompassion.
Sean Penn won his second best-actor Oscar, this one for playingslain gay-rights pioneer Harvey Milk in "Milk," while KateWinslet took best actress for "The Reader," in which she plays aformer concentration camp guard coming to terms with the ignorancethat let her heedlessly participate in Nazi atrocities.
Skip over this contentSkip over this contentPenn had harsh words for protesters outside the Oscars holdinganti-gay signs.
"I'd tell them to turn in their hate card and find their betterself," Penn said. "I think that these are largely taughtlimitations and ignorances, this kind of thing. It's really sad ina way, because it's a demonstration of such cowardice, emotionalcowardice, to be so afraid of extending the same rights to yourfellow man as you'd want for yourself."
Skip over this contentAs expected, Heath Ledger became just the second performer towin an Oscar posthumously, receiving the supporting-actor award forthe menace and mayhem he wreaks as Batman villain the Joker in"The Dark Knight." Penelope Cruz was the first Spanish actress towin an Oscar with her supporting prize as a volatile artist in athree-way romance in Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."
Ledger's award was accepted by his parents and sister on behalfof the 3-year-old daughter he had with actress Michelle Williams.The win came 13 months after Ledger died of an accidental overdoseof prescription drugs on Oscar nominations day last year.
His sister, Kate Ledger, said backstage that her brother sensedhe was creating something special with "The Dark Knight."
"When he came home Christmas a year ago, he had been sending meshots and bits and pieces of the film," Kate Ledger said. "Hehadn't seen it, but he knew. I said, `I have a feeling, this is itfor you,' and I said, `You're going to get a nomination from theacademy.' He just looked at me and smiled. He knew."
"I think he would have been quietly pleased, because I think heenjoyed the performance he did," said Ledger's mother, Sally Bell."He was very proud of what he did. Heath was never one to be overthe top with anything. He would be quietly pleased it was beingrecognized by his peers in the industry."
"Slumdog Millionaire" started as an unlikely candidate for thesort of industry and audience recognition it has garnered,presenting a cast of unknowns and a Dickensian tale of an Indianorphan rising above his street-urchin roots.
Though set in a foreign land, the film tells a universal storyof optimism that has been eagerly embraced by U.S. audiences.
"This country has changed, from the moment we started makingthe film to the moment it was released," "Slumdog" producerChristian Colson said. "I think America is cool again, for thefirst time in my lifetime. ... I think this is a symptom of howit's beginning to embrace a more-globalized view of the world."
Boyle earned the directing prize with his first Oscar nominationin a career of hip movies that include the drug romp"Trainspotting" and the zombie horror tale "28 Days Later."
"Slumdog Millionaire" has all the trademark elements of Boyle:raw and relentless energy, rich visual whimsy, a sense of childlikeyearning, and a seamless mix of the harrowing and hilarious.
The film follows the travails and triumphs of Jamal, whoartfully dodges a criminal gang that mutilates children to makethem more pitiable beggars. Jamal witnesses his mother's violentdeath, endures police torture and struggles with betrayal by hisbrother, while single-mindedly hoping to reunite with the lost loveof his childhood.
Fate rewards Jamal, whose story unfolds through flashbacks as herecalls how he came to know the answers that made him a champion onIndia's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."
"Slumdog" writer Simon Beaufoy, who won the adapted-screenplayOscar, said the film clicked with audiences stung by the recessionand the realization that "this money thing, it's been shown to bea real false idol."
"It's come out at a time when the value of money, which hasbeen raised to this extraordinary height, is suddenly being shownto be a kind of very shallow thing," Beaufoy said. "The financialmarkets are crashing around the world, and a film comes out whichis ostensibly about being a millionaire. Actually, what it's about,it's a film that says there's more important things than money:love, faith and family. And that struck a chord with people."
Oscar organizers shook things up a bit after last year's showdrew the lowest TV ratings ever. Song-and-dance man Hugh Jackmanwas host instead of the usual standup comedian, and he kept theshow to three and a half hours, relatively brisk for a ceremonythat has topped four hours some years.
The Oscars have been criticized in the past for devoting so muchtime to technical categories that average movie fans care littleabout. This time, the show abridged many of those awards, with WillSmith hammering through four such categories in quick succession,including sound mixing and film editing.
That allowed more time for the show to linger with celebrities.Each acting prize was presented by five past winners of the sameawards, among them Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Kevin Kline, SophiaLoren, Anthony Hopkins, Shirley MacLaine and Robert De Niro.
Winslet finally walked off with an Oscar after five previouslosses. While Winslet said she had been practicing Oscar speechessince childhood, holding a shampoo bottle instead of a goldenstatuette, she still felt "like a little girl from Reading," herhometown in England.
"Did you see my mum and dad? My mum won a pickled onioncompetition in their local pub just before Christmas, and that wasa big deal," Winslet told reporters backstage. "You just don'tthink that these dreams that seem so silly and so impossible couldever really come true."
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