King's Speech Wins Big at the Oscars

FEB 28, 2011 - The King's Speech took home four major Academy Awards on Oscar Night - for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. Not surprising, though.

However, the other nominated movies like Inception, The Fighter, and The Social Network did not do badly either. The Fighter took the early Oscars for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo in the Supporting Actor and Actress categories while Social Network took the Best Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing. Inception, expectedly, won the (four) technical categories like Cinematography, Visual Effects and Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.

Going away empty-handed are True Grit (zero out of 10 nominations), 127 Hours (six nods), The Kids Are All Right and Winter's Bone - both with four nods.

Oscar hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway did a commendable job although Franco has been criticised for being rather bland compared to previous one like Billy Crystal who also made an appearance. If Hathaway is not such a riot, she makes up for it, modelling a whole bunch of dazzling dresses.

The 83rd Academy Award Winners 2011:

Best Picture
The King's Speech

Best Actor
Colin Firth, The King's Speech

Best Actress
Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Best Director
Tom Hooper, The King's Speech

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale (pictured), The Fighter

Best Supporting Actress
Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Best Adapted Screenplay
Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

Best Original Screenplay
David Seidler, The King's Speech

Best Foreign Language Film
In a Better World (Denmark)

Best Animated Feature
Toy Story 3 - Michael Arndt (screenplay); John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich (story)

Best Documentary
Inside Job - Charles Ferguson and Audrey Mars

Documentary Short
Strangers No More - Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon

Art Direction -
Alice in Wonderland - Robert Stromberg (production design), Karen O'Hara (set decoration)

Costume Design
Alice in Wonderland - Colleen Atwood

Film Editing The Social Network - Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

Cinematography
Inception - Wally Pfister

Visual effects Inception - Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb

Original Music Score
The Social Network - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Original Song
We Belong Together from Toy Story 3 - Music and Lyric by Randy Newman

Make-up
The Wolf Man - Rick Baker and Dave Elsey

Animated short film
The Lost Thing

Sound editing
Inception - Richard King

Sound mixing
Inception - Lora Hirschberg, Gary A Rizzo and Ed Novick

Academy Honorary Award
* Kevin Brownlow
* Jean-Luc Godard
* Eli Wallach

Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award
* Francis Ford Coppola