‘The King’s Speech’ big winner of Oscar evening

LOS ANGELES - “The King’s Speech” and “Inception” tied at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards here Sunday night with four Oscars each, with the British royal drama bagging the big four of best picture, best direction, best actor and best writing while the sci-fi dominated the technical categories.

The King’s Speech, which was leading the Oscar nomination list with a presence in 12 categories, however, picked up the golden statuette in best picture as well as best direction (Tom Hooper), best actor (Colin Firth) and best original screenplay (David Seidler).

Natalie Portman bagged the best actress Oscar for her role in “Black Swan” at the ceremony in Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre Sunday night.

Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”, starring Leonardo Di Caprio, won the awards for best cinematography, best sound editing, best sound mixing and best visual effects.

David Fincher’s immensely popular The Social Network came close on the heels of the two films as it was awarded in three categories - best film editing, best music (original score) and best writing (adapted screenplay). The movie is based on the founding of the social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits, and is inspired from the 2009 non-fiction book The Accidental Billionaires.

“In a Better World” from Denmark took the best foreign language film award.

True Grit, which had 10 nominations at this year’s Oscars, went empty handed.

However, films like Toy Story 3, Alice In Wonderland and The Fighter won two honours each.

Toy Story 3, which amassed $1.1 billion at the box office in 2010, won the Oscar in best animated feature film. It also picked the award for best music (original score) category, beating Indian music composer A.R. Rahman, who was nominated for Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours.

Rahman was also nominated for best song If I Can Rise as well, but he missed the Oscar in that too.

Alice In Wonderland was given the Oscar for best art direction and best costume design, while The Fighter won the honours for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo for best supporting actor male and female respectively.

Inside Job, which takes a closer look at what brought about the financial meltdown, won Oscar for the best documentary, features at the 83rd Academy Award. The golden statuette was given to Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs for the film.

Director Luke Mathenys God of Love was declared the best short film, (Live Action). It is about a lovestruck, lounge-singing darts champion who finds his prayers are answered when he mysteriously receives a box of love-inducing darts.

Oscar for the best documentary, short subjects went to Strangers No More by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon.

Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley, Pete Bebb and Paul J. Franklin walked away with the Oscar for best visual effects for their work in the much appreciated sci-fi movie Inception, while Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall got the award for best editing for The Social Network.

India-born film editor Tariq Anwar was also among the nominees for best editing.