Happy Feet ends Miller's Oscars drought.
Monday Feb 26 2007
What a feat...Kytherian animation gets the Oscar nod!
With a lucky coin and a penguin in his tuxedo pocket for good fortune, prolific Australian filmmaker George Miller broke his Oscar hoodoo with the animated blockbuster, Happy Feet.
A few weeks back 61-year-old Miller confessed he would be content to go to his grave without winning an Academy Award.
Standing backstage at the ceremony with his shiny new gold statuette in his hand for best animated feature film, a movie about dancing penguins, the smile on Miller's face revealed a man glad to have his new friend.
"It's really nice," Miller said, looking down at Hollywood's greatest prize.
Miller's Oscar win, after three unsuccessful nominations, came on a politically-charged night of shock wins, comebacks and emotional speeches at the 79th Annual Academy Awards.
Just as the Academy finally anointed Miller with an Oscar, it put American director Martin Scorsese out of his misery.
Scorsese, 64, finally broke through for his first Oscar after seven unsuccessful attempts in 26 years, despite classics such as 1980's Raging Bull and 1990's mob movie Goodfellas.
Scorsese won for his Boston-set gangster film, The Departed.
"Could you double check the envelope," Scorsese cracked after he received a 10 second standing ovation.
The Departed, which featured Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg, also won the top award of the night, best picture.
The best actor and actress Oscars went as expected, with Forest Whitaker winning for The Last King of Scotland and Helen Mirren for The Queen.
Former US vice president, Al Gore, also won best documentary feature for An Inconvenient Truth, which spells out the potential destruction of the world from global warming.
The big shock of the night was Eddie Murphy being snubbed in the best supporting actor category for Dreamgirls, with Little Miss Sunshine's Alan Arkin the surprise winner.
Australia went into the ceremony with four nominees, but only Miller was victorious.
Cate Blanchett missed out on best supporting actress for her performance in the drama Notes on a Scandal.
The category's red hot favourite, Jennifer Hudson, won for her role in the musical Dreamgirls, a stunning result as it was the American Idol cast-off's first feature film.
Australian duo Peter Templeman and Stuart Parkyn also did not win in the short live action film category for their 17 minute movie, The Saviour. The Oscar instead went to West Bank Story, a comedy-musical by American director Ari Sandel.
Miller, a father of three children aged from six to 20, revealed on stage he had brought a few good luck charms to the Kodak Theatre.
"I asked my kids what should I say," Miller told the audience in his acceptance speech.
"They said 'Thank all the men for wearing penguin suits.'
"They gave me a lucky coin, a lucky penguin."
Miller's Oscar win was also an historical one for the Australian film industry, as Happy Feet was the first full-length animated feature film made in Australia.
Created over five painstaking years, the film was put together at Sydney's Fox Studios with a largely Australian crew of more than 500 and used the voices of Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Steve Irwin and other Hollywood stars, including Robin Williams and Elijah Wood.
Animal Logic, the Australian special effects house based at Fox Studios, built an animation studio from scratch to make Happy Feet.
Miller, who quit a career in medicine, has been one of Australia's most influential filmmakers.
His first hit was the apocalyptic Mad Max in 1979, which launched the international acting career of Mel Gibson, and in the 1980s he made TV mini-series such as Bodyline, Cowra Breakout and Vietnam.
Miller was first nominated for an Oscar in 1993 for writing the screenplay for the drama, Lorenzo's Oil, starring Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte, but he went home empty-handed.
In 1996 Miller's barnyard fantasy film, Babe, was nominated for best picture and screenplay, but he failed to win either.
"I never thought I'd be holding an Oscar for animation," Miller told reporters.
"Honestly, this is true. I can say I didn't expect to win."
Happy Feet was the underdog in the animation category, with the Pixar-Disney film, Cars, the favourite. Pixar's John Lasseter had claimed two of the last three animation Oscars for Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.
"I was sitting next to John Lasseter, who I thought would win," Miller said.
©AAP 2007
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=229431
