Oscars 2012: Christopher Plummer Wins Best Supporting Actor, Woody Allen Wins Best Original Screenplay
"Beginners" star Christopher Plummer captured a Best Supporting Actor Oscar at the 84th Annual Academy Awards on Sunday for his performance as a gay man coming out of the closet late in life.
The 82-year old Plummer became the oldest person ever to win an acting Oscar.
“When I first emerged from my mother's womb I was already rehersing my Oscar acceptance speech, but it was so long ago...mercifully I forgot it,” Plummer quipped.
Also read: 2012 Oscars: Complete List of Winners & Nominees
Plummer was the odds-on favorite entering Sunday's contest, as was Octavia Spencer, who won Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a maid in the segregated south in "The Help."
The visibly emotional actress thanked her director Tate Taylor and her co-stars.
"I share this with everybody," Spencer said. "Thank you world."
Woody Allen won his first Oscar since 1986's "Hannah and Her Sisters" for his screenplay for "Midnight in Paris." True to form, the perennial Oscar no-show was not on hand to pick up his award.
Alexander Payne's tragi-comedy "The Descendants" won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for the director, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.
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Payne said he dedicated the award to his mother after she made him promise to honor her like Javier Bardem did in 2008.
Sending up the old west did the trick for "Rango," which won a Best Animated Feature award for Gore Verbinski. The director applauded the star of the animated film and his previous collaborator on "The Pirates of the Caribbean" films.
"I want to thank the real world comedian Johnny Depp," Verbinski said.
Among other early winners, "A Separation" captured Best Foreign Language Film, while "Hugo" established an early lead picking up five awards in technical categories.
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The Iranian film's director Asghar Farhadi thanked the people of his native country, specifically "the people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment."
"Undefeated" picked up a Best Documentary Oscar for T.J. Martin, Dan Lindsay, and Richard Middlemas.
The broadcast kicked off Sunday night with a film parody featuring Billy Crystal and many of the Best Picture nominees.
But it wasn't long before Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" took an early lead in the early production awards.
The first two awards of the evening was for cinematography and art direction went, not to perceived front-runner "The Artist," but to "Hugo"s' Robert Richardson for "Hugo" and Dante Ferretti.
That was followed later by wins in the sound editing category for Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty and sound mixing for Tom Fleischman and John Midgley.
"The Artist" got itself on the board, however, with an award for its 1920s costumes and the work of Mark Bridges. The silent film later picked up an award for Ludovic Bource's score, despite a controversy involving the composer's mimicry of Bernard Herrmann's work on "Vertigo."
In the Best Original Song category, Bret McKenzie won an Oscar for "Man or Muppet" from "The Muppets."
"I was genuinely starstruck when I met Kermit the Frog, but once you get to know him, he's a regular frog," McKenzie joked.
Transforming Meryl Streep into British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland a statue for their work on "The Iron Lady."
Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall's gritty film editing of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" held off challenges by "Hugo" and "The Artist."
Crystal took the stage at the theater formerly known as the Kodak and revived his typical musical melody featuring the top films vying for honors.
As he had in eight previous hosting stints, Crystal gently ribbed Hollywood egos and the event's pomposity, without really going for the jugular.
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"Nothing can take the sting out of the world's economic problems like watching millionaires present each other with golden statues," Crystal said.
With a nod to the Kodak Theater's impending name change and the namesake company's recent bankruptcy, Crystal quipped, "We're here at the beautiful Chapter 11 theater.”
It marks the Oscar veteran's first hosting gig since 2004.
There were also performances by Cirque du Soliel and a humorous parody of a test screening for "The Wizard of Oz" featuring Christopher Guest, Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara.
Going into the show, momentum seems to be with "The Artist," which is widely expected to capture the Best Picture statue -- especially after its four wins Saturday night at the Indie Spirit Awards -- but there are always surprises at every Oscar show.
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