Oscars Latest: Arrivals Begin For An Unusual Academy Awards
Oscars Latest: Arrivals Begin For An Unusual Academy Awards
The Latest on the Oscars (all times local):

LOS ANGELES: The Latest on the Oscars (all times local):

8:20 p.m.

Anthony Hopkins has won his first Oscar since he was victorious for playing Hannibal Lecter.

Despite his pedigree, Hopkins was a surprise as the winner of the Academy Award for best actor for his work on The Father.

The late Chadwick Boseman was expected to win the award, which, in a very rare move from the academy, was the last to be handed out this year instead of best picture.

It was also an anti-climax on a show where Hopkins wasnt present to accept the trophy. Joaquin Phoenixs reading of his name was the last dramatic moment of a most unusual ceremony.

The second Oscar for Hopkins comes nearly 30 years after his first in 1992, for playing Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Hes been nominated four times since without a win.

The 80-year-old Hopkins won the Oscar for his role as a man who battles with dementia opposite Olivia Colman in the film directed by Florian Zeller.

__

A PANDEMIC ACADEMY AWARDS

Nomadland wins best picture at a social distanced Oscars

The list of final winners at a different Academy Awards

The Oscars bring back red carpet glam in whites and gold

Chlo Zhao makes history with best director Oscar win

Regina King reacts to Chauvin verdict in Oscars opening

Pixars Soul wins best animated feature Academy Award

For complete coverage of this years Oscars, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards

___

HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

8:15 p.m.

Frances McDormand has won the Oscar for best actress, and Nomadland triumphed in three of the top categories, including best picture and best director.

Its the third Oscar for McDormand, who also won best actress in 2018 for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. That Oscar was stolen at the post-show Governors Ball, though it was recovered before the night was over.

McDormand plays a woman who leaves her small town to wander the American West in director Chlo Zhaos film Nomadland.

She beat out fellow nominees Viola Davis, Carey Mulligan, Vanessa Kirby and Andra Day.

___

8:15 p.m.

Nomadland has wandered straight into the Academy Award for best picture.

Its an unprecedented triumph in the awards shows most prestigious category for a film with a woman as both director and lead.

In a radical departure from previous decades, the best picture Oscar was not the last handed out. Best actress and best actor have yet to be awarded.

Directed by Chlo Zhao, who won best director earlier Sunday night, and starring Frances McDormand, who is up for best actress, Nomadland follows a woman who leaves her small town to join a group of wanderers in the American West.

Its just the second film directed by a woman to win a best picture Oscar. The first was the Kathryn Bigelow-directed The Hurt Locker in 2009.

It beat out fellow nominees Judas and the Black Messiah, Minari, Sound of Metal, The Father, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Mank and Promising Young Woman.

___

7:30 p.m.

Fight for You from Judas and the Black Messiah has won the Academy Award for best original song.

The Oscar goes to songwriters Dernst Emile II and Tiara Thomas and H.E.R., who also performed it.

From the stage at Union Station in Los Angeles on Sunday night, H.E.R. thanked her father for playing her funk and soul from the late 60s, when the film about Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton was set.

All those days of listening to Sly and the Family Stone, and Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye really paid off, she said.

Daniel Kaluuya also won best supporting actor Sunday for playing Hampton.

Earlier, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste won best score for the music they composed for Soul, the Pixar film that also won best animated feature.

___

7 p.m.

Yuh-Jung Youn has become the first Korean actor to win an Academy Award.

She claimed the Oscar for best supporting actress Sunday night for her performance in Minari as a grandmother who moves from South Korea to live with her daughters farming family in Arkansas.

It was the first Oscar nomination in a career that spans five decades for the 73-year-old Youn, long a star in South Korea.

She seemed starstruck herself by Brad Pitt, who presented the award.

Mr. Brad Pitt, finally, nice to meet you! she said.

She said many throughout the world have badly botched the pronunciation of her name, but tonight you are all forgiven.

Last year the South Korean film Parasite won best picture and best director, but none of its actors were nominated for Oscars.

Youn beat out fellow nominees Olivia Colman, Amanda Seyfried and Maria Bakalova and Glenn Close, who has now been nominated for eight Oscars without a win.

___

6:45 p.m.

My Octopus Teacher, the tale of an eight-limbed creature and her human companion, has won the Oscar for best documentary.

Ten years in the making, My Octopus Teacher began as a personal video project by South African filmmaker Craig Foster to rekindle his connection with nature by observing an inquisitive female mollusk while free-diving near Cape Town.

Foster said his relationship with the octopus taught him about lifes fragility and our connection with nature, and even helped him become a better father.

For the Oscar, My Octopus Teacher beat out Collective, Crip Camp, The Mole Agent and Time.

___

6:30 p.m.

Soul has won the heart of Oscar voters.

The Pixar film won the Academy Award for best animated feature Sunday night, continuing the Disney divisions dominance in the category.

Directed by Pete Docter and featuring the voices of Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey, Soul follows a middle-school band teacher who dreams of being a jazz musician and tries to escape the afterlife to do it.

This film started as a love letter to jazz, but we had no idea how much jazz would teach us about life, Doctor said as he accepted the Oscar.

Pixar has now won the award 11 times in the 20 years since the category was established.

___

6 p.m.

Chlo Zhao has made history at the Academy Awards.

Zhao won the Oscar for best director for Nomadland, becoming just the second woman and the first woman of color to win the award.

My entire Nomadland company, what a crazy, once-in-a-lifetime journey weve all been on together, Zhao said.

Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win, for The Hurt Locker, in 2009.

This was the only year in Oscar history with two female nominees, Zhao and Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell. Only seven women have ever been nominated.

It was the first Oscar for the 39-year-old Zhao, who was born in Beijing and went to college and film school in the United States. Nomadland is her third feature.

The other nominees were Lee Isaac Chung for Minari, Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round, and David Fincher for Mank.

It may not be long before Zhao gets her second Oscar. Nomadland is considered the favorite for best picture, and shes nominated as a producer.

___

5:30 p.m.

Daniel Kaluuya used a lead role to win a best supporting actor Oscar. Hell take it.

Kaluuya won his first Academy Award on Sunday night for playing one of the two title roles in Judas and the Black Messiah.

Id like to thank my mom, Kaluuya said, as his mother teared up while watching. You gave me everything. You gave me your factory settings. So I could stand at my fullest height.

Kaluuya played Chicago Blank Panther leader Fred Hampton, who was killed in an FBI raid in 1969.

In an odd quirk of the nominating process, LaKeith Stanfield, who played the Judas of the title, an FBI informant who got close to Hampton, was also nominated for best supporting actor.

It was Kaluuyas second nomination. The first came for his breakout role in Get Out in 2018.

The other nominees were Paul Raci, Leslie Odom Jr. and Sacha Baron Cohen.

___

5:20 p.m.

Raise a glass for Another Round.

The film from Denmark, directed by Thomas Vinterberg, has won the Oscar for best international feature film.

This is beyond anything I could ever imagine, Vinterberg said from the stage at Union Station in Los Angeles on Sunday night. Except this is something Ive always imagined.

It is the fourth time a film from Denmark has won in the category. The last was In a Better World in 2010.

Another Round stars Mads Mikkelson as one of a group of school teachers who try to stay slightly drunk all day to break out of their midlife malaise.

Vinterberg teared up when he told the audience his daughter died four days into shooting. An accident on the highway took my daughter away, he said. We ended up making this movie for her, as her monument. So, Ida, this is a miracle that just happened.

Vinterberg is also nominated for best director Sunday night.

___

5:15 p.m.

The first Oscar of the night has gone to Emerald Fennell, writer and director of Promising Young Woman.

Fennell won best original screenplay at the ceremony Sunday night at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. The award isnt normally handed out until mid-show, but this year has already broken with several traditions in the opening minutes.

Its the first Oscar for Fennell, a 35-year-old British actor and screenwriter.

She worried from the stage that she was going to be in trouble.

Fennell fretted after taking the Oscar statue that she would be in trouble with the shows producers, who are trying to make this years ceremony less like a TV show and more like a film.

They said write a speech, and I didnt because I didnt think this was ever going to happen, she said.

She is also nominated for best director for the #MeToo-themed revenge tale.

The nights second Oscar, for best adapted screenplay, went to Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller for The Father.

The two co-wrote the script based on Zellers 2012 play.

___

5:10 p.m.

The Academy Awards have begun in true cinematic fashion.

This years unusual ceremony opened with actor and director Regina King grabbing an Oscar statuette outside Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and walking it inside while credits rolled, giving the shows presenters, including Angela Basset and Harrison Ford, and nominees including Viola Davis and Riz Ahmed, as the shows stars.

Inside Union Station in front of a small crowd, King then opened the show with a monologue, telling the nominees in front of her to think of this as a movie set.

People have been vaxxed, tested, re-tested and socially distanced, she said, informing everyone to take their face masks off while the cameras rolled, and to put them on during breaks.

Producers and directors promised that this years ceremony would be closer to a movie then a television show.

___

4:20 p.m.

Performances of the Oscar nominees for best original song have begun from locations as varied as Los Angeles and Iceland, even if the ceremony hasnt.

In one of many twists in this years ceremony, the five songs are being presented in a pre-show before the main event begins at Union Station in Los Angeles at 5 p.m. Sunday.

Laura Pausini performed a pre-taped Io Si (Seen) from The Life Ahead high above Los Angeles on the roof of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures that opens in September. She was joined by writer and 12-time nominee Diane Warren playing a red grand piano, and an orchestra decked out in red.

Swedish singer Molly Sandn performed Hsavk from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga on a cold boat dock in Iceland, joined by a sweater-sporting childrens choir from the town the song is named for, which has adopted the song as a de facto anthem.

There are also will be performances of Fight for You from Judas and the Black Messiah, Speak Now from One Night in Miami and Hear My Voice from The Trial of the Chicago 7.

___

3:30 p.m.

Leslie Odom Jr. has arrived at the Academy Awards decked out in gold from head to toe. He has two chances Sunday night to get a matching Oscar.

Wearing the sparkling double-breasted suit with a matching gold shirt underneath, Odom walked the scaled-back red carpet outside Union Station in Los Angeles with his wife, actor Nicollette Robinson, who was in a simple black dress.

Odom told KABC-TV from the carpet that it feels great to be walking in healthy, walking in at all.

Odom, nominated for best supporting actor and best original song for One Night in Miami, can get one or two Oscar statuettes to go with the Tony and Grammy he won for playing Aaron Burr in the original Broadway cast of Hamilton.

He praised this years diverse nominees, including his own film, Ma Raineys Black Bottom and Judas and the Black Messiah, calling it a special moment for films about black lives.

___

2:45 p.m.

The preparations are done and the arrivals have begun for a most unusual Oscars.

Paul Raci, up for best supporting actor Sunday, and Diane Warren, up for best original song, were among the early arriving nominees.

Raci, a 73-year-old first-time nominee for Sound of Metal, and Warren, a 12-time nominee who has never won, walked a red carpet that was heavily scaled back for the pandemic outside Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, where the ceremony is being held for the first time.

Actor Colman Domingo of multiple nominee Ma Raineys Black Bottom made the days first big fashion splash with a shockingly pink tuxedo.

Mank has the most nominations and Nomadland is the favorite in several top categories at the 93rd Academy Awards starting at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET.

___

11 a.m.

Show producers are hoping to return some of the traditional glamour to the Oscars, even in a pandemic year.

The red carpet is back, though not the throngs; only a handful of media outlets will be allowed on site. Casual wear is a no-no.

Pulling the musical interludes (though not the in memoriam segment) from the three-hour broadcast and drastically cutting down the time it will take winners to reach the podium will free up a lot of time in the ceremony. And producers, led by filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, are promising a reinvented telecast.

The Oscars will look more like a movie, Soderbergh has said. The show will appear more widescreen and the presenters including Brad Pitt, Halle Berry, Reese Witherspoon, Harrison Ford, Rita Moreno and Zendaya are considered cast members. The telecasts first 90 seconds, Soderbergh has claimed, will announce our intention immediately.

Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram.

What's your reaction?

Comments

https://tupko.com/assets/images/user-avatar-s.jpg

0 comment

Write the first comment for this!