WINNERS INTERVIEWS: LIFE OF PI Snags Four OSCARS, ARGO, LES MIZ Take Home Three; LINCOLN, DJANGO UNCHAINED Leave with Two
- Details
- Category: Celebrity News, Interviews, Pictures
- Published on Tuesday, 26 February 2013 00:05
- Written by Janet Walker
The 85th Academy Awards, hosted by Seth MacFarlane, provided an evening of surprising upsets, with no real conqueror emerging, as eight of the nine Best Picture nominated films picked-up at least one golden statuette from academy voters.
The talent amassed for the evening represented more academy award winners than any other year. Paying tribute to music in Hollywood the star studded line-up included stunning performances from Barbra Streisand, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Hudson, Dame Shirley Bassey, Norah Jones, Adele and cast of LES MISERABLES.
LIFE OF PI, directed by Ang Lee, took top honors for Lee in Achievement in Directing and the film also won OSCARS for Cinematography and Best Achievement in Visual Effects and Original Score.
ARGO, directed by Ben Affleck and produced by Affleck, George Clooney and Grant Heslov, ended its award season dominance winning Picture of the Year, Best Adapted Screenplay and Achievement in Film Editing.
LINCOLN, the Steven Spielberg bio-pic, ended the evening with two golden statuettes with Daniel Day Lewis winning Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role and for Achievement in Production Design.
DJANGO UNCHAINED, the Slave Western from Quentin Tarantino, also took home two OSCARS as Christoph Waltz wins Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance as King Schultz and Tarantino wins Best Screenplay.
WALT DISNEY PIXAR Animation dominated in both the Best Animated Feature Film, for BRAVE, and for the black and white silent Animated Short Film, PAPERMAN.
LES MISERABLES, the screen adaption of the masterful musical, also went home with three Academy awards, winning for Best Achievement in Hair and Make-up and Best Sound Mixing. LES MISERABLES' Anne Hathaway snagged Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role.
ZERO DARK THIRTY and SKYFALL tied for Achievement in Sound Editing and Adele Atkins and Paul Epworth Win Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures for Skyfall performed by Adele for the film, SKYFALL.
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, which had earned academy award nominations in all four talent categories took home one Golden statuette as Jennifer Lawrence won for her Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role!
AMOUR took home Best Foreign Film; SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN won Best Documentary Feature; CURFEW Best Live Action Short; Best Documentary Short went to INOCENTE and Anna Karenina wins for Best Costume Design!
The Academy also honored, in an earlier ceremony, four members of the entertainment community, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Hal Needham, D. A. Pennebaker and George Stevens, Jr., with The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for their lifetime of extraordinary distinction, efforts, contributions and service to the Academy.
The Academy also presented The Science and Technical Awards, earlier in February with fourteen attendees receiving an Academy Certificate; ten receiving an Academy Plaque, one OSCAR Statuette was awarded to Cooke Optics Limited and The John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation Special Medallion to Bill Taylor for outstanding service and dedication in upholding the high standards of the Academy.
As credentialed Day of Show media for the 85th academy awards there were opportunities to interview the academy award winners. The following includes interviews with Christoph Waltz, Best Supporting Actor, Animated Short Film winner John Kahrs and Rick Carter who won for Production Design on LINCOLN.
From Christoph Waltz . .
Janet Walker: Hi. During the filming of DJANGO UNCHAINED when did you realize, or did you realize, that there was something special about this film.
Christoph Waltz: When i read the script for the first time, I realized that there was something special about this film. I know Quentin, and I read the pages more or less as they came out of the printer. Page by page, I realized that there was something special in the making.
From Rick Carter Production Design Winner for LINCOLN . . . Janet Walker: You listed AVATAR and WAR HORSE and you started working on LINCOLN in 2001, you said. What were some of the challenges that you faced to create the production design for LINCOLN? Rick Carter: Well, it's a very limited production, actually and so what we did is we, again, in this particular case, finding Richmond, Virginia, which was the heart of the confederacy, and going there and finding so much of LINCOLN's legacy is still alive there in all the positive ways, for the most part, so that we could actually use, and they graciously invited us in Richmond, Virginia to use their legislature and shoot wherever we wanted to. And I think that gave it purposefulness so that we actually were shooting on, essentially, hallowed ground because that's where most of the sacrifice of the Civil War occurred between Richmond and Washington. That was really the fight, between those two capitals.
With John Kahrs Animated Short Winner for PAPERMAN . . .
Janet Walker: And with all that it is a silent film.
John Kahrs: Right. Janet Walker: So how did you - what were some of the challenges you faced with getting all of those plausible and the implausible and the elements of the film into such a compact time?
John Kahrs: That is tough, but yeah, I mean for me the idea of it having no words in it makes it extremely portable, that you can show it all around the world and it communicates. And the idea there is that it's visual storytelling, and I think the best films to me are the ones that you can understand where the sound is turned off. But, yeah, it's still a tall order to make the audience believe that these two people are a perfect couple from the very first shot. But I have a few tricks up my sleeve and I have amazing people at DISNEY on my team, especially from a design standpoint and an animation standpoint that do fantastic work.
For more information on the Academy: www.oscars.org
www.facebook.com/TheAcademy
www.youtube.com/Oscars
www.twitter.com/TheAcademy
