The Best-Director Oscar Went to Roman Polanski

LOS ANGELES – In a ceremony overshadowed by the U.S.-led war in Iraq, “Chicago”, nominated for 13 Oscars, became the first musical since 1968’s “Oliver!” to win the top Oscar and also took home the most trophies, six; including Catherine Zeta-Jones for best supporting actress. “Chicago” also won four technical awards.

Nicole Kidman won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of writer Virginia Woolf in the drama “The Hours.”
Other Oscar winners include the relatively unknown Adrien Brody, who won the best actor award for his performance in the Holocaust memoir “The Pianist,” and veteran actor Chris Cooper won an Oscar for his supporting role in the film “Adaptation.”

Brody played the title character in “The Pianist,” based on the real-life story of musician Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who lived through World War II by hiding from the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto.
The best-director Oscar went to Roman Polanski, also for “The Pianist.” Polanski has been an exile from the United States since fleeing 25 years ago to avoid sentencing for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

“This film would not be possible without the blueprint provided by Wladyslaw Szpilman,” Brody said. “This film is a tribute to his survival.”

“My experience making this film made me very aware of the sadness and the dehumanization of people in times of war, and the repercussions of war. And whether you believe in God or Allah, may he watch over you, and let’s pray for a peaceful and swift resolution,” Brody said, fighting back tears and drawing a standing ovation.

Many stars attending this year’s academy awards ceremony were wearing peace pins or other signs of protest over the U.S.-led war in Iraq.Controversial director and political activist Michael Moore criticized President Bush and the U.S. military action in Iraq in his acceptance speech for his best documentary Oscar for the film “Bowling for Columbine.”

Documentary winner “Bowling for Columbine” is Moore’s alternately hilarious and horrifying examination of gun violence in America.

Moore, a harsh critic of the Bush administration, received a standing ovation. He invited his fellow documentary nominees on stage, saying they were there in “solidarity with me, because we like non-fiction, and we are living in fictitious times. … We live in a time where we have a man who’s sending us to war for fictitious reasons.
“We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you,” Moore said, amid a mix of boos and applause from the crowd.

The Scientific and Technical Academy Awards were presented on March 1, 2003, at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. Many awards this year went to the new technologies that are changing the movie business.

One Oscar went to Canadian developers of a software program called Maya, a 3-D animation, modeling and rendering production tool. The customizable software has been used to some degree on nearly every feature film using 3-D computer-generated images and was employed extensively in such films as “Spider-Man,” “Ice Age,” “Hollow Man” and “The Perfect Storm.”

“Maya is the tool set that’s used by the artists to create the eye-popping visual effects and computer-generated characters in the movies,” explained Doug Walker, who heads the Toronto-based company that developed the software. “Just think about how you felt the first time you saw a dinosaur in Jurassic Park. That’s what Maya will allow artists to do.”

Security for this year’s Oscars is the tightest in the 75-year history of the awards and the usually glitzy ceremony has taken on a more somber tone. During the awards anti-war demonstrators rallied outside the theater behind police barricades.

Los Angeles police closed stores and cleared streets around the Kodak Theater in downtown Hollywood, and the National Guard was called in to oversee the proceedings.

With a contributing report from (voa) and (ap)