REPORT
car.
After all these years, you can finally say "Oscar winner
Leonardo DiCaprio." The actor nearly died trying to film
"The Revenant," so maybe the Academy wanted to give
him an award before he seriously hurt himself next time.
Either way, DiCaprio was thrilled, though he ended his
acceptance speech on a downer note about climate
change.
6) Lady Gaga had the most powerful moment of the ceremony.
The singer let loose with a bombastic performance of
"Til It Happens to You," the best song nominee from the
film "The Hunting Ground," about sexual assault on college campuses. Joe Biden introduced her with an impassioned plea to help sexual assault victims: "We must
and we can change the culture so that no abused woman or man, like the survivors you will see tonight, ever
feel they have to ask themselves 'What did I do?' They
did nothing wrong."
Afterwards, a group of sexual assault victims stood with
Lady Gaga at her piano. Hands raised, they had words
written on their arms like "it happened to me" and "not
your fault," providing one of the most moving moments
of the night.
7) Things got kind of raunchy.
If there was any pretense that the Academy Awards are
some kind of staid and classy ceremony, it was quickly
ditched by a merkin joke from Jared Leto and Sarah
Silverman's bizarre introduction for Sam Smith's best
song performance, in which she made reference to her
"heavy Jewish boobs." And that was before Sacha Baron Cohen's alter ego, Ali G, took the stage to make a
groan-worthy crack about "little yellow people with tiny
dongs." (He was referring to "Minions.")
8) Alejandro Inarritu and Emmanuel Lubezki are on a
roll.
For the second consecutive year, Inarritu won the Oscar for best directing. (Last year, it was for "Birdman.")
That means the Mexican director is now part of an exclusive club, along with back-to-back winners Joseph L.
Mankiewicz ("A Letter to Three Wives," "All About Eve")
and John Ford ("The Grapes of Wrath," "How Green
Was My Valley").
Lubezki, meanwhile, has won three in a row for cinematography. Inarritu's collaborator also won for Birdman
last year; the year before he was celebrated for Gravity.
He's the first cinematographer to win back-to-back-toback, though two other cinematographers have still hold
the record for the most wins: Leon Shamroy and Joseph
Ruttenberg won four.
9) Chris Rock sold Girl Scout cookies and people got
really excited.
Being a good dad, Rock just wanted to help his daughters sell a few more cookies.
10) Twitter fact-checks Sam Smith.
While accepting his award for best original song for Writing's On the Wall from SPECTRE, British singer Sam
Smith incorrectly quoted a statistic from Ian McKellen
about how no openly gay man had ever won an Oscar.
"If this is the case, and even if it isn't, I dedicate this
to the LGBT community around the world. I stand here
tonight as a proud gay man," Smith said. Immediately
Twitter lit up to correct him -- McKellen was talking specifically about the best actor prize.
11) What about Abe Vigoda?
The in memoriam interlude routinely leaves people out.
This year the touching tribute forgot, among others, Vigoda, who died in January. The Godfather actor was
nominated for three Emmys for his role on the television
show Barney Miller.
12) Louis C.K. is the best presenter.
Before presenting the documentary short prize, Louis
C.K. schooled everyone about the fact that for many
nominees in the room, their nomination isn't that big of
a deal -- after all, they're still millionaires. However, for
documentary short, it's different.
"These people, this is documentary short film. It's not
even documentary feature. You cannot make a dime on
this. These people will never be rich as long as they live,"
he joked. "So this Oscar means something because all
they do is tell stories that are important ...They're going
home in a Honda Civic. This Oscar could be the nicest
thing they ever own in their life.
13) There were lots of ladies in glasses.
14) And the gif of the night award goes to. ...
Tom Hooper! For his awkwardly sheepish stutter wave
when best supporting actress winner Alicia Vikander
asked from the stage, "Where's Tom? Where's my director?"
15) What people really think of the nominees.
One of the most amusing and incisive bits of the evening
came when Chris Rock said he visited a theater in Compton (though Compton doesn't have a movie theater so
it was somewhere else) to ask black moviegoers what
they thought of the Academy Award nominees. None of
the people Rock talked to had seen Spotlight,Brooklyn
or Bridge of Spies. And, in fact, one woman was convinced that Rock was just messing with her. "Where
are you getting these movies from?" she asked. "You're
making up some, right?"
16) And the winner is Mark R...ylance.
It seemed like Sylvester Stallone had the best supporting actor category on lo