The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spread its bounty around last night, giving four Oscars to the controversial boxing picture Million Dollar Baby, including best picture, and five lesser awards to the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator.
Hilary Swank won the best actress Oscar for her role in the boxing picture, while Clint Eastwood took home the best director award and Morgan Freeman won for best supporting actor, for his role as a washed-up boxer.
Jamie Foxx won the best actor award for his impersonation of singer Ray Charles in the biopic Ray. Cate Blanchett received the award for best supporting actress, playing Kate Hepburn in The Aviator.
The Incredibles won for best animated feature film.
The 77th annual Academy Awards arrived against a backdrop of general malaise over awards shows and plummeting ratings for the Oscars in recent years.
The Oscars responded this year with a dash of street-smart attitude and a shakeup of its presentational style, tapping comedian Chris Rock for master-of-ceremonies duties -- the first black man to host the awards on his own -- going outside the sphere of safely earnest jokesters such as Billy Crystal and Steve Martin for the first time in years.
Mr. Rock did not disappoint, kicking off the telecast with jokes about the four black actors nominated -- a relatively high number -- and following it up with a man-on-the-street comedy bit in which he searched for but found no black movie-goers who had seen any of the films up for the best picture award.
He sniped at some actors, laughing at Jude Law's overexposure last year and comparing stars such as Mr. Eastwood with the younger actor Tobey Maguire, who Mr. Rock called, "a boy in tights."
He also strayed into politics, taking potshots at the budgetary and foreign policies of U.S. President George W. Bush, but also saluting the courage of both Michael Moore and Mel Gibson for making Fahrenheit 9/11 and Passion of the Christ, respectively.
But the esthetically conservative academy hedged its bets, opening the show with a dry montage of famous movie clips, narrated by Dustin Hoffman. The show also included a tribute to the late Johnny Carson, who had served as a master of ceremonies for five Oscar shows.
Mr. Foxx's win for best actor was widely anticipated. The only tension among most viewers was whether he would be able to hold himself together as he paid tribute to his grandmother, who raised him and who passed away shortly before the release of Ray.
Noting she had often beaten him for bad behaviour, Mr. Foxx said that he now speaks with her in his dreams. "And I can't wait to go to sleep tonight," he said, choking up, while he held his statuette aloft. "Because we got a lot to talk about."
Ms. Swank's best-actress Oscar was her second in as many tries, for her role as a hardscrabble boxer.
"I'm just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream," said Ms. Swank, who was born in Lincoln, Neb. "I am eternally grateful for this honour."
Accepting his award, his second best director Oscar after winning for his revisionist Western Unforgiven in 1993, Mr. Eastwood noted his age and pointed out the older director Sidney Lumet, who had been honoured earlier in the evening with a lifetime achievement award.
"I watched Sidney Lumet out there, who's 80, and I figure: Huh, I'm just a kid. I've got a lot of stuff to do yet," he said.
The National Film Board of Canada took the spotlight with director Chris Landreth's film, Ryan, which won for best animated short.
The film, which was supported by the film board, is a portrait of the former NFB animator Ryan Larkin, whose career spiralled down when he hit a period of drug and alcohol abuse. He now lives on the margins in Montreal.
Early in the evening, it looked as if The Aviator might be running for a sweep, taking awards for editing, cinematography, art direction and costume design.
Critical darling Charlie Kaufman won for his original screenplay of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, while Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor took home the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for their work on the road trip ode to pinot noir, Sideways.
The Sea Inside won for best foreign language film. Born Into Brothels won for best feature length documentary. Jorge Drexler won for best original song for his composition, Al Otro Lado Del Rio, from Motorcycle Diaries.
The highest-profile Canadian nominee was the writer Paul Haggis, a creator of the TV series Due South, who was up for the best adapted screenplay award for his script for Million Dollar Baby. The writers for Sideways won.
Simon Houpt