The cast and crew of "Slumdog Millionaire" accepting the award for best picture.
(Monica Almeida/The New York Times)
THE 2009 ACADEMY AWARDS
A 'Slumdog' kind of night at the Oscar ceremony
By Michael Cieply and David Carr Published: February 23, 2009
LOS ANGELES: "Slumdog Millionaire" and its director, Danny Boyle, with their modern-day fairy tale about hope and hard times in the slums of Mumbai, pushed aside big-studio contenders to sweep top honors at the 81st annual Academy Awards on Sunday.
"You dwarf even the sky," Boyle said in a tribute to the people of Mumbai, who figured by the thousands in his film. He spoke while accepting the best director award, only minutes before "Slumdog Millionaire" was named best picture, helping give the evening a distinctly international tilt.
Boyle, 52, has been known for putting an inspirational twist on often dark and sophisticated movies that have included "Trainspotting," about heroin addiction, and "Sunshine," about sacrifice on a mission to reignite the sun.
The many prizes for "Slumdog Millionaire" — whose writer, Simon Beaufoy, was honored for best adapted screenplay, among others prizes for the film — completed the film's steady march past competitors like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" from Paramount Pictures and "Frost/Nixon" from Universal Pictures.
The best picture award was a first for Fox Searchlight, which distributed "Slumdog Millionaire" in the United States. In the past, the studio appeared to narrowly miss the big prize with a series of comic best picture nominees that included "Little Miss Sunshine," "Sideways" and "The Full Monty."
In what was widely perceived to be one of the year's few tight races, Sean Penn was named best actor for his performance in the title role in "Milk."
"You Commie, homo-loving sons of guns," said Penn, who edged aside Brad Pitt and Mickey Rourke, among others, for the best actor Oscar, his second.
Best actress honors went to Kate Winslet for her performance in "The Reader" as a German woman who becomes romantically involved with a teenager and later conceals her role in the Holocaust.
Hollywood has been taking on more and more of a global tilt with each passing year, but on this evening it was especially evident in the show and in the awards themselves.
After Penélope Cruz won for best supporting actress for her role in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," she gave part of her speech in Spanish — she said backstage it was a dedication to the actors and people of Spain — and then suggested backstage that the movies had to grow beyond the bounds of strictly American stories. "We are all mixed together, and it has to be reflected in the cinema," she said.
The supporting actress award, the night's first, was presented by no less than five past winners of the prize, Whoopi Goldberg, Tilda Swinton, Eva Marie Saint, Goldie Hawn and Anjelica Huston. The heavy show of star power was meant to make good on a promise that the broadcast would deliver entertainment value that reached far beyond that offered by the nominees.
Heath Ledger, in a widely anticipated development, posthumously won the best supporting actor prize for his performance as the Joker in "The Dark Knight." Ledger's parents afterward said his Oscar statuette would be held in trust by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Many other awards also went to those favored in the preshow betting.
Dustin Lance Black won the best original screenplay Oscar for "Milk," about the gay-rights advocate Harvey Milk. Black, who is openly gay, said Milk's story had given him hope that one day he might "fall in love and even get married."
Beaufoy, whose "Slumdog" screenplay was based on a novel by Vikas Swarup, rattled off a list of places he never expected to be — "the moon, the South Pole, the Miss World podium and here" — as he accepted that award for his work on a film that captured many of the movie industry's pre-Oscar honors and was widely viewed as a preordained winner of the evening's final award, for best picture.
Also in the first wave of awards, "Wall-E" was named best animated film, though it had been denied the best picture nomination that its backers at the Walt Disney Company and its Pixar Animation unit had sought.
Overall, Sunday evening's Oscar show became a struggle between the ambitions of a producing team — headed by the veteran film producer Laurence Mark and the filmmaker Bill Condon — that aimed for an evening full of surprises and the apparent determination of 5,810 voters in the academy to bestow honors largely where they were expected to go.
A much-discussed new format for the show opened with a loosey-goosey showbiz number and proceeded along very self-referential lines, with lots of inside jokes that drew substantial laughs from the crowd inside the Kodak Theater here.
Hugh Jackman, the evening's host, started with a very short comic monologue that poked fun at his own failure to get nominated for his performance in "Australia." He then plunged into a comic song-and-dance number that poked fun at serious movies that were nominated for best picture, including "Milk" and "Frost/Nixon," and less serious movies that were not, including "The Dark Knight."
An early appearance by the screenwriting winners helped give the evening a story line of its own: the awards categories were arranged in blocks intended to reflect the process of building a film, beginning, in the first segment, with a blinking cursor tapping out the beginning of a script on a blank screen.
In another departure, the celebrity presenters were not identified in advance, partly in the hope that a larger-than-usual audience would tune in to see who actually showed up.
Last year's broadcast, with the smallest domestic audience in the ceremony's history, had only about 32 million viewers in the United States.
The show's stage sets, overseen by the New York architect David Rockwell, were bathed much of the time in blue and included a vast crystal curtain. And the show was punctuated by deliberate references to movies that had played well with ticket-buying audiences last year but were often not in the running for awards, the nominations for which went overwhelmingly to relatively little-seen movies.
To some extent, the show's elements collided with themselves, as songs, cinematic retrospectives and actor after actor working Hollywood in-jokes crowded the screen. One sequence, directed by Bennett Miller, of "Capote," was squeezed out altogether but was shown to the in-theater audience during a commercial break.
In keeping with the self-referential tone of the night, the best live action short was teed up with a live action short from Judd Apatow, with Seth Rogen and James Franco, in character from their "Pineapple Express" film, in starring roles.
"This is almost a surreal moment to me," said the German filmmaker Jochen Alexander Freydank as he accepted the award for his "Spielzeugland," which had not much to do with the antics that preceded it.
A reconfigured auditorium made it much easier for the celebrities to mingle during commercial breaks. The mood was lively and chaotic. Rourke sat on the edge of the stage kicking his legs during several breaks, with a stage manager coming to shoo him back to his seat.
Jackman came across less as comic than as cabaret performer. Along the way, he did his best to try to keep the troops entertained during the commercial breaks, serenading his dad in the audience, reading a note from his wife ("you're doing good so far, babe") and even going into the aisles to hand out cookies.
Still, all the showmanship seemed only to highlight the basic challenge of a ceremony whose producers were hoping to capitalize on movies' strong commercial appeal: The best picture candidates — "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk," "The Reader" and "Slumdog Millionaire" — altogether had fewer than half the viewers of "The Dark Knight," an audience favorite that was praised by many critics but still did not make the cut.
In the end, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which had been the evening's most-nominated film, with 13 nominations in all, won for its art direction and makeup but not in the crucial acting and directing categories. "Frost/Nixon," directed by Ron Howard, was the only best picture nominee to come away with no prizes at all.
"Slumdog Millionaire," though it had no actors nominated for prizes, swept many awards other than those on the top line, including prizes for cinematography, sound mixing, score and film editing. "Slumdog's" eight Oscars was the largest total won by a single film since "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" won 11 in 2004.
Hopes of using the evening to celebrate the enduring popularity of films were complicated by the grim economic realities of the moment. The academy has been trying to celebrate a year in which movie attendance remained buoyant without looking as if the industry is out of touch with the misery elsewhere.
Walking in among the stars who lined the red carpet, Harvey Weinstein, a founder of the Weinstein Company, said a bit of glamour was needed to help "overcome the malaise" that hung over matters more real. "If we and the movies don't create an illusion, we've failed," said Weinstein, whose company released "The Reader."
Phillipe Petit, the French tightrope walker from "Man on Wire" — which won for best documentary feature — walked into the ceremony on the carpet and said, "I haven't been looking at the red carpet, I've been looking above and thinking of what it would be like to be on a wire above all this."
In one of the night's few surprises, the best foreign language film went to "Departures," a drama about an unemployed cellist, from Japan. Many observers had predicted "Waltz With Bashir," an Israeli animated drama about that country's past war in Lebanon, would take that prize.
In addition, the standard "In Memoriam" segment took on special significance this year because one of the nominees for best supporting actor, Ledger, died unexpectedly of a drug overdose early last year, before "Dark Knight" was even released. Queen Latifah sang a familiar ballad, "I'll Be Seeing You," from the Broadway musical "Right This Way," during the memorial segment.
The glittering event at the Kodak is generally a pretty grown-up affair, but this year children from halfway around the world made a splashy appearance. The kids from "Slumdog Millionaire" had no trouble adjusting to the head-snapping cultural shift from India to the red carpet.
"I want to see Johnny Depp, Robert De Niro, and Jack Nicholson, Robert Downey," said Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala, who played the young Salim in the film. "Seeing any of them would be cool."
He was surrounded by seven co-stars who played the main characters at various ages. When asked how they felt about their film being among the nominated, they all backed up as if on cue and shouted, "Jai ho," which translates roughly as "Victory."
Another child from India was Pinki Sonkar, whose cleft palate repair was the story behind "Smile Pinki," which won the documentary short film category.
Jerry Lewis, the 82-year-old comedian who has devoted much of his time to raising money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from Eddie Murphy, who had reprised one of Lewis's most famous roles, "The Nutty Professor."
"The humility I feel will stay with me for the rest of my life," Lewis said. "To all of you people from the movie business, it is such a joy being part of you and of everything you do."
Brooks Barnes contributed reporting.
译文:
“贫民”之夜----奥斯卡颁奖典礼
《贫民窟的百万富翁》荣获奥斯卡最佳影片奖
（莫妮卡-阿尔梅达 摄/纽约时报）
2009年度奥斯卡金像奖
“贫民”之夜----奥斯卡颁奖典礼
米歇尔-谢普利、大卫-卡尔 于2009年2月23日
洛杉机：本周日，丹尼-博伊尔和他所执导的电影《贫民窟的百万富翁》挤掉众多大制作对手，掳获了第81届奥斯卡金像奖的多项荣誉。这部电影讲述了一个关于在孟买贫民窟中的困境和希望的现代童话。
出现在他的电影中的孟买人民数以千计。“你们甚至比天空还要高大。”在向孟买的人民致意时，博伊尔说。当时他正在领取最佳导演奖，几分钟后，《贫民窟的百万富翁》被提名为最佳电影，无疑让这个奥斯卡之夜颇有几分“外国人的美国梦”的味道。
博伊尔现年52岁，因善于赋予表现黑暗和复杂题材的电影以鼓舞人心的力量见称。其中包括关于海洛因毒瘾的《猜火车》和关于自我牺牲以完成重新点燃太阳的任务的《太阳浩劫》。
编剧赛门-比尔弗伊被授予最佳改编剧本奖。这和其他众多奖项一起，让《贫民窟的百万富翁》在诸如《返老还童》（派拉蒙特影业公司），《对话尼克松》(环球影片）等竞争对手面前大出风头。
福克斯探照灯是《贫民窟的百万富翁》在北美的发行商。这是该公司的第一个最佳影片奖。它曾凭借包括《阳光小美女》，《杯酒人生》和《脱衣舞男》在内的电影获得了一系列的最佳影片提名，却似乎总是和大奖擦肩而过。
在这场被普遍认为是近年少有的激烈的最佳男主角之争中，西恩-潘凭借在《米尔克》中的表演获得了提名。
"感谢评委，能够支持我的这个同性恋的角色，想必你们也是同类吧。”西恩在挤掉了布拉德-皮特，米奇-鲁尔克等其他候选人，第二次夺得奥斯卡最佳男主角时，如是说。
最佳女主角的荣誉花落凯特-温斯莱特。她在《生死朗读》中饰演一个与15岁少年相恋的德国女人，并在之后因为一个秘密承认了她在纳粹大屠杀中的不实罪状。
好莱坞的奖项分布近来一年比一年更倾向于国际化，在这个晚会的表演和颁奖上，这种倾向分外明显。
在获得最佳女配角奖之后，佩内洛普-克鲁兹用西班牙语发表了部分感言。她私下说这是对西班牙演员和人民的献词，并暗示电影必须跳出典型美国故事的束缚：“我们都是一体的，而电影必须反映出这一点。”
最佳女配角是当晚的第一个奖项，颁奖嘉宾为五位往届得主：乌比-戈德堡，蒂尔达-斯文顿，爱娃-玛莉-森特，歌蒂-韩和安杰丽卡-休斯顿。明星们的重磅登场是为了兑现当初的承诺，让节目的娱乐性远比那些提名候选人所能产生的要大。
已故演员希斯-莱杰凭借其在《暗夜骑士》中的小丑角色众望所归地赢得了最佳男配角。莱杰的父母后来说他的小金人将由美国电影艺术与科学学院保管。
很多其他的奖项也由预测中的热门人物捧得。
达斯汀-兰斯-布莱克凭借《米尔克》，一部关于同性恋权利拥护者哈维-米尔克的电影，获得了最佳原创剧本奖，并说米尔克的故事给了他希望和勇气，让他觉得或许有一天会恋爱甚至结婚。
比尔弗伊在接受颁奖时说，对他来说，这个奖就像是月亮，南极和迷失的世界一样，只有梦里可以看见。他将维卡斯-史瓦卢普的小说改编成剧本《贫民窟的百万富翁》。这部电影在奥斯卡之前就获得了电影界的许多荣誉，并被普遍认为是当晚的大奖----最佳影片得主的不二选择。
首先被揭晓的奖项中,《机器人总动员》被提名为最佳动画长片，然而与之无缘的最佳影片奖才是其投资方沃尔特-迪士尼和皮克斯动画想要的。
总的来说，星期天当晚的奥斯卡夹在幕后制作班底和5810名美国电影艺术和科学学院的投票人之间进退两难。前者以资深制片人劳伦斯-马克和电影导演比尔-康登为首，雄心勃勃地想要让整个晚会充满悬念和惊喜；后者却显然下定决心让荣誉的去向众望所归。
新的晚会形式倍受关注：以一部轻松幽默的歌舞短剧开场，旨在介绍电影内容的台词中融入了许多笑话，使得柯达剧院里的观众的不断大笑。
当晚的主持人休-杰克曼首先做了一个很短却有趣的开场独白，自嘲他在《澳大利亚》中的表演并未获得提名。然后他载歌载舞地调侃了从获最佳影片提名的到没被提名的，从严肃的到不这么严肃的许多电影，如《米尔克》和《对话尼克松》以及《黑暗骑士》等。
晚会上最佳原创剧本和最佳改编剧本的揭晓仅在最佳女配角之后，这样的安排是为了对应电影制作的流程：每一部光华流溢的电影，最初，都是由空白屏幕上闪烁游移的鼠标开始的。
作为另一种新的尝试，颁奖嘉宾的身份事先并未公布，其部分原因当然是为了吸引更多的观众来看看到底是谁来颁奖。
去年的直播在美国境内的收视观众只有3200万，为史上最低。
今年奥斯卡典礼的舞台由纽约著名建筑师大卫-洛克威尔设计。灯光主要为蓝色调，投射在那一大片水晶幕帘，让整个舞台都沐浴在晶莹的蓝光中。晚会以一部涵盖了多部电影精华片段的短片结束，这些票房反应的电影通常不会参加奥斯卡角逐，因为其提名往往会给那些相对没这么多人看过的电影。
在某种程度上，这场晚会的组成元素是相互矛盾的：音乐，电影回顾，演员明星们不断插入的好莱坞圈内的流行笑话同时出现在舞台上。在广告时间里，剧院里的观众甚至看到了班尼特-米勒所导演的电影《卡波特》中的一段被删掉的场景。
为了维持自嘲式的晚会基调，最佳真人短片揭晓前是一部由贾德-阿帕图编剧，《菠萝快车》的主演塞斯-罗根和詹姆斯-弗朗科出演的真人短片。
“这对我来说就像个梦境一样。”德国电影制作人约根-亚历山大-费登接受颁给《玩具岛》的最佳真人短片奖时说。值得一提的是，这部短片和之前的搞怪没什么关系。
为了让明星们能在广告时间里更方便地聊天，座位被特意重新安排过。剧院里的气氛轻松随意。在好几个广告时段里，路克坐在舞台边缘甩腿，直到工作人员把他赶回座位去。
对于搞笑演员的角色，杰克曼显然比对歌舞剧演出还要驾轻就熟。整个典礼上，他尽全力娱乐场上所有的人：对着他坐在观众席里的父亲唱小夜曲；当众念他妻子给他的小纸条（亲爱的，到目前为止，你都做得很棒）；甚至还走到过道去派发饼干。
然而，这么卖力的表演更加说明了要达成晚会制作方的要求是一项多大的挑战。他们想让这些电影为他们带来更多的商业利益，然而获得最佳影片提名的五部电影----《返老还童》、《对话尼克松》、《米尔克》、《生死朗读》和《贫民窟的百万富翁》-----全部票房加起来也不及《黑暗骑士》的一半。然而，这部最受观众好评，电影评论家们也赞不绝口的电影却没有入围提名。
虽然获得了本届最多的高达13项的提名，但《返老还童》最后只拿到了最佳艺术指导和最佳化妆，而在至关重要的表演和导演奖项类一无所获。获得最佳影片提名的五部电影中，罗恩-霍华德的执导的《对话尼克松》则是唯一一个没有得到任何奖的。
尽管没有演员获得提名，《贫民窟的百万富翁》却横扫奥斯卡，掳获了包括最佳摄影，最佳音响效果，最佳配乐和最佳剪辑在内的8项大奖，成为了继2004年《魔戒：王者归来》获11项大奖以来，获奥斯卡最多的电影。
鉴于目前严峻的经济状况，学院舍弃了大肆歌颂电影业的繁荣，转而致力于庆祝电影行业在不显得对低迷的现状漠不关心的同时，仍保有这么高的关注度。
和其他影星一样踩着红地毯步入剧院时，《生死朗读》的发行商温斯坦公司的创始人哈维-温斯坦说，为了帮助人们克服总悬在心头的不安情绪，一些魔法的有必要的：“如果连我们的电影都没有创造出这种海市蜃楼，那么我们已经失败了。”
菲力浦-佩帝曾在《走钢丝的人》中出演一个法国钢索杂技演员,该片获得了当年的最佳纪录长片。他走红地毯时说道：“我看着脚下的红地毯，想象如果我是走在钢丝上会是什么的情形。”
《入殓师》获得了最佳外语影片。该片来自日本，讲述了一个关于一位穷困潦倒的大提琴演奏家的故事。这是少数几个意料之外的结果之一。许多评论家认为《和巴什尔跳华尔兹》会得到这个奖，那是一部关于以色列与黎巴嫩的战争的动画片。
除此之外，传统的“缅怀”环节今年显得意义非凡。最佳男主角候选人之一莱杰在《黑暗骑士》发片之前就因用药过量去世了。在这个有纪念意义的环节上，奎恩-拉提法演唱了人们耳熟能详的民谣《我会看着你》，它源自百老汇音乐剧《这边请》。
基本上，柯达剧院的这一盛事是属于成年人的。然而今年却有孩子们横跨了半个地球来到这里闪亮登场。《贫民窟的百万富翁》里的儿童演员们对于从印度到红地毯的巨大环境转变适应得很好。
“我想见到约翰尼-戴普、罗伯特-德-尼罗、杰克-尼克逊和罗伯物-丹尼。”小舍利姆的饰演者阿舒托什-洛博-格吉瓦拉说，“只要见到其中一个就很酷了。”
他身边的是在这部电影中扮演三个主角的不同年龄段的另外7个演员。当被问到对于他们的电影获得提名有什么想法时，他们异口同声喊"Jai ho”，翻译过来意思是“必胜！”
另一个从来自印度的孩子名叫平琪-索卡，她天生兔唇，后来被治好了，这就是最佳纪录短片《微笑的平琪》的背后的故事。
杰瑞-刘易斯获得了琼-赫肖尔特人道主义奖。这位82岁的喜剧演员大部分时间都致力于为肌肉萎缩症协会募捐资金。为他颁奖的是曾经再现过刘易斯经典角色之一----“糊涂教授”的艾迪-墨菲。
“我所感受到的人性的善良会一直陪伴着我，”刘易斯说，“感谢所有电影行业的工作人员，能够成为你们当中的一员，参与你们正在做的事，真是太开心了。”
布鲁克斯-巴姆斯 后续报导