“The Aviator” won on points, five statuettes to four, but Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” knocked out all competition at Sunday’s 77th Academy Awards by winning best-picture, best-director, best-actress and best-supporting-actor Oscars.
Eastwood beat the oft-nominated and never victorious Martin Scorsese, whose Howard Hughes biopic “The Aviator” seemed another great chance in a storied career to finally win the directing honor.
Despite weeks of buildup promising a fresher ceremony and risky humor from comic host Chris Rock, this year’s Oscars settled for dull but efficient. Rock took political uppercuts at President Bush and sent up the staid whiteness of mainstream movies, but the middle of the show descended into montage limbo and long speeches for obscure awards.
Two quick jabs of prizes at the end, though, made Eastwood’s “It’s-not-a-boxing-movie” a surprisingly big winner in a year when no best-picture nominee passed $100 million at the box office. Hilary Swank took home her second best-actress, award at the age of 30, for playing a haunted boxer training in the haunted gymnasium owned by Eastwood’s character. In a speech true to both her character and her real life, Swank said, “I’m just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream.”
Morgan Freeman was named best supporting actor for playing Scrap, the washed-up fighter who literally wipes the spit off the floor of that noirish gym. The broadcast quickly turned into a love-in for Eastwood, 74, who makes his lean films in a few weeks and never has to say much more than, “Thank you.”
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2005 ACADEMY AWARDS
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In one of the few moments of the night when no one was holding their breath, Jamie Foxx won the best-actor statuette for a warm and spot-on portrayal of singer Ray Charles in “Ray.” Foxx thanked his late grandmother for forcing him to grow up “a Southern gentleman,” and noted that she now talks to him in his dreams. “I can’t wait to go to sleep tonight,” Foxx said, choking up, “because we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Eastwood brought his 96-year-old mother to the ceremony, and complained after seeing 80-year-old Sidney Lumet win a lifetime achievement award, “I’m just a kid!”
Scorsese may have seen his hopes rise early in the night, when his sharp and passionate retelling of the early career of Hughes also won for cinematography, art direction, editing and costume design. Cate Blanchett took the best-supporting-actress award for “The Aviator,” with her remarkable show of channeling the incomparable Katharine Hepburn without looking silly.
Oscar producers trying to shore up the show’s sagging annual ratings put extra star power into their choices for face time. Big names from Leonardo DiCaprio to Halle Berry to Blanchett graced the cameras, many of them up for awards just minutes later. Demands for shorter speeches paid off in graceful thank-yous from Freeman, Blanchett, best-adapted-screenplay co-winner Alexander Payne and more. Freeman thanked best-director Eastwood for picking him as Scrap, years after Eastwood and Freeman teamed up in Eastwood’s other best-directing win, “Unforgiven.”
It was Freeman’s fourth Academy nomination, and though many critics thought the “Million Dollar Baby” role was a little too familiar to showcase Freeman’s best work, he is an increasingly honored icon of modern film. Freeman did not win in other years when he should have, and he is a crowd favorite at events like the Denver International Film Festival, where he was honored onstage last fall.
Blanchett won in her second nomination, overcoming tough competition from Virginia Madsen in “Sideways” and Sophie Okonedo in “Hotel Rwanda.”
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 Million Dollar Baby: Won Best Picture; Best Actress Hilary Swank; Best Director Clint Eastwood; Best Supporting Actor Morgan Freeman.
 Ray: Won Best Actor Jamie Foxx  : Won Best Supporting Actress Cate Blanchett; Film Editing; Cinematography; Costume Design
 : Won Best Adapted Screenplay
 : Won Best Original Screenplay  : Won Best Original Score
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Rock quickly filled the political vacuum left when Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” were shut out of major award nominations. Rock ignored Hollywood’s careful dance toward the political center by blasting President Bush on his job performance with an unexpected vehemence. Though Rock said it all with a smile, the sting of the jokes had even the most liberal faces in the crowd looking around for approval to clap.
Rock made a minor attempt at balancing his own jabs with a mention of Gibson’s “Passion,” noting how it “wasn’t that funny.”
Brad Bird’s “The Incredibles” won a tough fight in the best-animation category, beating out the 2004 box-office winner, “Shrek 2.” Though the “Shrek” franchise is wildly popular with families, animation fans lauded Bird for an intelligent script about America’s demand for heroes, and his sure sense of a unique retro-future styling.
In one of the starkest contrasts of fortune and fate in Academy history, the Oscar for best documentary bestowed the glittering statue on a film about the wretched children of India’s prostitution slums. “Born Into Brothels” told the story of Western photographers trying to offer a new dream to the downtrodden children of Calcutta by arming them with cameras and lessons. “Brothels” bested the box-office favorite “Super Size Me.”
Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry and Pierre Bismuth won the best-original-
screenplay Oscar for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” The best-foreign-picture award went to Spain’s “The Sea Inside,” about a quadriplegic struggling for the right to die.
Award handicappers struggled for a theme to this year’s awards in the absence of an obvious sweep, such as last year’s 11-for-11 performance by “The Lord of the Rings.” That edginess was underlined by broadcast producer Gil Cates, who responded to falling ratings by trying to shake up the show’s format. Cates had some come onstage in groups to stand awkwardly before their winner was announced; he also put stars like Blanchett out in the middle of the audience to pass out “best makeup” and other awards.
Rock, who had made headlines with pre-Oscar dissing of his own job, noted the tension by jokingly welcoming the crowd to “the 77th and LAST Academy Awards.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com .
