Best Director went to Ron Howard, and Best Picture went to A Beautiful Mind ... again, not huge surprises. A Beautiful Mind was able to survive the ugly campaign waged against it, but did only emerge with a total of four Oscars, so once again, the Academy spread the wealth over a variety of films. It was nice to see Ron Howard winning his first ever Oscar, and the audience gave him a warm standing ovation. And I hate to rub it in to the Lord of the Rings folks, but I did say it ... the Academy would simply not give such high honors to a fantasy film. It did win four Academy Awards, all in technical categories, winning the Oscars for cinematography, visual effects, music-original score for Howard Shore, and makeup.
Speaking of music, one of the other big highlights of the evening was Randy Newman ... he FINALLY won an Academy Award. He received a warm standing ovation as well (quite a night for standing ovations, nine in all!), after he surprisingly won the Best Music - Original Song Oscar for his song to Monsters, Inc., "If I Didn't Have You." That win was quite a surprise, and was certainly not one of the better songs in the category, but I had to admit it was very nice to see Newman finally win, and again, to see him express the emotion of the moment. With this nomination, Newman had stood on the verge of being the biggest Oscar non-winner of all time, and in a category where no song really stood out this year, this was probably his best shot at winning.
Black Hawk Down and Moulin Rouge won two Oscars apiece, all very well deserved. Black Hawk Down claimed the awards for film editing and sound, while Moulin Rouge deservedly won the Oscars for Costume Design and Art Direction. Tom O'Neil of goldderby.com and from E! brought up an interesting point about the wins by Moulin Rouge ... those two Oscars were the two exact same Oscars won by the original Moulin Rouge in 1952!
The very first Animated Feature Oscar went as expected to Shrek, very well deserved. Best Foreign Film trumped Amelie with the choice of No Man's Land from Bosnia & Herzegovina. Best Original Screenplay went to Julian Fellowes for Gosford Park, which should have gone to Memento, one of the most truly original screenplays in quite some time. As expected, Akiva Goldsman won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for A Beautiful Mind. I figured that if In The Bedroom had any chances for victory, the Adapted Screenplay category might be the one. Unfortunately, the film I thought was the best of the year ended up going home completely empty handed on Oscar Night.
