81st Academy Awards
The 81st Academy Awards ceremony was held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to honor its selection of the best films of 2008 on Sunday, February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California. The ceremony was televised in the United States on ABC and on Sky Movies in High definition in the United Kingdom. Australian performer Hugh Jackman hosted the ceremony for the first time. Academy Award-nominated producer Laurence Mark produced with Academy Award-winning writer/director Bill Condon as executive producer.
Slumdog Millionaire won eight awards, the most of the evening, including Best Picture and Best Director (Danny Boyle). The Curious Case of Benjamin Button led the nominations with a total of 13 while Slumdog Millionaire received ten, The Dark Knight and Milk received eight, and Doubt, The Reader, and Frost/Nixon each received five. The animated film WALL-E, the winner for Best Animated Feature, received six nominations, tying it with Beauty and The Beast for the most nominated animated film in Oscar history.
The Academy hoped to rework the ceremony through an entirely new production team sworn to secrecy. The ceremony received recent controversies prior to its broadcast, most notably the Academy’s alleged snubbing of films such as The Dark Knight, Doubt, and WALL·E, threats from a possible Screen Actors Guild strike, and fear of the Oscar telecast’s recent low viewership.
Winners of major awards
Feature films
Best Picture : Slumdog Millionaire : Christian Colson
Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British drama film directed by Danny Boyle, with co-director (India) Loveleen Tandan, and written by Simon Beaufoy. It is an adaptation of the Boeke Prize winning and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize nominated novel Q and A by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup. Set and filmed in …
Best Foreign Language Film : Departures – Japan : Yojiro Takita
Departures (Okuribito) is a 2008 Japanese film directed by Yojiro Takita. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2009 Oscars. Plot Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a cellist in an orchestra in Tokyo, loses his job because of dissolution of the orchestra. After quitting as a professional cellist, …
Best Documentary Feature : Man on Wire : Simon Chinn
Man on Wire is a 2009 Academy Award-winning documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center and is based on Philippe Petit’s book, To Reach the Clouds, which has recently been released in paperback …
Best Animated Feature : WALL·E : Andrew Stanton
WALL-E is a 2008 computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The film was directed by Andrew Stanton. It follows the story of a robot named WALL-E who is designed to clean up a waste covered Earth far in the future. He eventually falls in love with another …
Directing
- Best Director Danny Boyle Slumdog Millionaire
Acting
- Best Actor in a Leading Role : Sean Penn : Milk
- Best Actress in a Leading Role : Kate Winslet : The Reader
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role : Heath Ledger : The Dark Knight
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role : Penélope Cruz : Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Writing
- Best Writing – Original Screenplay : Dustin Lance Black : Milk
- Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay : Simon Beaufoy : Slumdog Millionaire
Special honors
- Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award : Jerry Lewis : Comedic film & Humanitarian Work
Other Awards
- Best Art Direction – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Donald Graham Burt, Victor J. Zolfo
- Best Cinematography – Slumdog Millionaire – Anthony Dod Mantle
- Best Costume Design – The Duchess – Michael O’Connor
- Best Documentary Feature – Man on Wire
- Best Documentary Short – Smile Pinki – Megan Mylan
- Best Animated Short – La Maison En Petits Cubes – Kunio Kato
- Best Live Action Short – Toyland (Spielzeugland)
- Best Film Editing – Slumdog Millionaire – Chris Dickens
- Best Makeup – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Greg Cannom
- Best Original Score – Slumdog Millionaire – A. R. Rahman
- Best Original Song – “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire – A. R. Rahman (music), Gulzar (lyrics)
- Best Sound Editing – The Dark Knight – Richard King
- Best Sound Mixing – Slumdog Millionaire – Resul Pookutty, Richard Pryke, Ian Tapp
- Best Visual Effects – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton, Craig Barron
Nominations
The nominees for the 81st Academy Awards were announced live on Thursday, January 22, 2009, at 5:38 a.m. PST (13:38 UTC) by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Sid Ganis and Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in the Academy’s Beverly Hills headquarters. The winners were announced during the awards ceremony on Sunday, February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. Jerry Lewis was honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Multiple nominations and awards
The following 15 films received multiple nominations.
- 13 nominations: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- 10 nominations: Slumdog Millionaire
- 8 nominations: The Dark Knight and Milk
- 6 nominations: WALL-E
- 5 nominations: Doubt, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader
- 3 nominations: Changeling and Revolutionary Road
- 2 nominations: The Duchess, Frozen River, Iron Man, Wanted, and The Wrestler
The following four films received multiple awards.
- 8 awards: Slumdog Millionaire
- 3 awards: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- 2 awards: The Dark Knight
- 2 awards: Milk
81st Academy Awards – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tags: academy awards ceremony, best actress, Hugh Jackman, kate winslet
