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Volume CXXXIII, Number 17 |
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Frodo lives! Rings lords over Oscars in historic sweep
MIKE NUGENT
STAFF WRITER
One Ring to rule them all, indeed.
In an extraordinary and historic sweep, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the final chapter in Peter Jackson's adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's epic fantasy, was victorious in all of its 11 nominated categories at the Oscars last weekend.
Besides being the first fantasy film ever to win Best Picture, it tied Titanic (1997) and Ben-Hur (1959) for the most Oscar wins ever. And in tying that record, it also achieved the largest complete sweep of all of a film's nominations in Oscar history. The last two films to accomplish this were The Last Emperor (1987) and Gigi (1958), both of which had nine nominations.
Besides Best Picture, the film also won for director, adapted screenplay, editing, score, song, art direction, costume design, sound, visual effects, and makeup.
The whole Lord of the Rings trilogy has amassed 30 nominations and 17 wins. The Godfather and Star Wars trilogies don't even come close.
Other than ROTK's improbable sweep however, this was not a surprise-filled Oscars on the level of last year's, with The Pianist's three out-of-the-blue wins. Overall, an amiable lack of tension pervaded this year's festivities.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which came into the ceremony with the second highest nomination tally with 10, managed to win two Oscars in sound editing and in cinematography, which was considered a very tight category.
In winning Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola became part of only the second family with Oscar winners in three generations, with her father Francis winning numerous Oscars for The Godfather trilogy and grandfather Carmine winning for The Godfather: Part II's score. The first family to accomplish this was the Hustons.
Charlize Theron won Best Actress for her work in Monster, where she played the real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Sean Penn was victorious in the Best Actor category for Mystic River and was the only recipient of a standing ovation.
In the supporting categories, Tim Robbins won, also for Mystic River, as did Renee Zellweger for Cold Mountain. It was her third nomination in as many years.
In general, the acting winners had dominated the precursor awards throughout the year and were odds-on favorites for victory.
Finding Nemo, up until recently the highest grossing film of the year at the box office, easily won in the Animated Film category.
The producers of The Barbarian Invasions, the winner in the Foreign Film category, made light of Return of the King's sweep, saying when they got to the podium, "We're glad that The Lord of the Rings did not qualify in this category."
The highlight of the night, however, was Mitch and Mickey's performance of the nominated song "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," from A Mighty Wind, with Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara reprising their roles and the climactic moment of the film. This great, purposely hokey song was one of the best Oscar moments of the last few years.
At the end of this controversy-filled Oscar year, with the screener ban and the shortened awards season that threw out many preconceived notions of how to predict winners, it is difficult to predict whether or not the move up to February was indeed beneficial.
But changes are already underway. Miramax has announced that it is going to move the release of Martin Scorsese's The Aviator up from December to November 2004 so that Oscar as well as precursor voters will have a better chance to see the film. The playing field has now forever been altered, and all of the studios know only too well that "adapt or die" applies here.
But the Lord of the Rings trilogy, truly a once-in-a-lifetime film event, is now over. Every year since the 21st century began, audiences have tuned in to the next chapter of the saga, and with its end we now all reenter the great unknown, just like Frodo and his friends so bravely did.
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