The 80th annual Academy Awards ceremony was good to a cute, little rat, a big, bad wolf and some powerful polar bears as Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille, Suzie Templeton’s Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and New Line Cinema’s The Golden Compass walked off with gold statuettes. Hosted by The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart, the telecast opened with an effects segment that featured animated characters from Cars, Transformers, The Hulk, Godzilla (’98) and other films interacting with live-action Hollywood stars. Barry B. Benson, the CG-animated star of DreamWorks Animation’s Bee Movie, also made an appearance as a presenter, sounding a lot like Jerry Seinfeld.
Having already racked up a bevy of awards this year, Ratatouille took the Oscar for Best Animated feature, besting Sony Pictures Animation’s Surf’s Up and Sony Pictures Classic’s Persepolis. Ratatouille director Brad Bird accepted the award, taking the stage at the Kodak Theater for the second time since The Incredibles won in 2005. He began his speech by remembering his high school career counselor, who tried his best to talk him out of wanting to make movies. ‘I’ve only realized just recently that he gave me the perfect training for the movie business,’ Bird remarked before thanking ‘all the dreamers at Pixar and Disney ‘ for supporting a rat that dreams.’
Bird was also up for Best Original Screenplay for Ratatouille, along with co-writers Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco. Taking the award was Diablo Cody, a former exotic dancer who wrote the surprise hit Juno, which was also nominated for Best Picture. Ratatouille composer Michael Giaccchino’s original score was also trumped, losing to Dario Marianelli’s score for Atonement.
In the Best Animated Short category, Peter and the Wolf won over Josh Raskin’s I Met the Walrus, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s Madam Tutli-Putli, Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse’s Meme Les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven) and Alexander Petrov’s Moya Lyubov (My Love). Director Suzie Templeton was joined on stage by producer Hugh Welchman, who cradled the Peter stop-motion puppet used in the film.
Up against the blockbusters Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, The Golden Compass was a bit of an underdog going into the competition for Best Visual Effects. Still, the team of Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris, Trevor Wood managed to pull out a win. After its stellar performance at the VES Awards, Transformers was the odds-on favorite, especially considering the Pirates saga has earned its share of vfx Oscars. The Compass team was quite enthusiastic as they took the stage. Fink hooted ‘Thank you!’ before quoting Walt Disney in saying ‘It’s quite fun to do the impossible.’
It was a big night for the Joel and Ethan Coen, who won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director for No Country for Old Men, which also took Best Picture. Daniel Day Lewis was named Best actor for his performance in There Will Be Blood, and Marion Cotillard took Best Actress for playing legendary French crooner Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. The complete list of winners can be found at www.oscars.org.
