Oscars go young and hip, with traditional results

They also couldn't have been more predictable. Front-runners in other major categories throughout this long and repetitive awards season also took home trophies from Hollywood's Kodak Theatre Sunday night: best-actor Colin Firth for "The King's Speech," best-actress Natalie Portman for "Black Swan," and supporting actors Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, both for "The Fighter." "King's Speech" director Tom Hooper, who'd already won the Directors Guild Award — an excellent predictor of Oscar success.

British actor, Colin Firth, best actor winner for his role in "The King's Speech"

(...) Besides the four Oscars for "The King's Speech" — picture, director, actor and original screenplay for David Seidler — "Inception" also won four, all in technical categories, as expected: visual effects, cinematography, sound editing and sound mixing. The great Roger Deakins, who was also up for the cinematography prize for the Coen brothers' "True Grit," went home empty-handed once again. He's now 0-for-9.

 

Best actress Natalie Portman and best supporting actress Melissa Leo

Among the front-runners in other categories that were winners Sunday night were the latest Pixar blockbuster, "Toy Story 3," for animated feature and "Inside Job," about the 2008 economic collapse, for documentary feature.

(...) Aaron Sorkin, winner of the adapted screenplay Oscar for "The Social Network," had some positive words for Mark Zuckerberg, whose creation of Facebook is the basis for the film. The movie views Zuckerberg from a variety of perspectives and doesn't always place the young billionaire in the kindest light.

"He's been an awfully good sport about this. You know, I don't think there's anybody here who would want a movie made about things they did when they were 19 years old," Sorkin said. "And if that movie absolutely, positively had to be made, you would want it made only from your point of view, and you wouldn't want to include also the points of view of people who have sued you for hundreds of millions of dollars and, you know, had a visceral emotional reaction to you. But that is the movie that we made."