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    Al Pacino Awkwardly Announces Best Picture Oscar for ‘Oppenheimer’

    Al Pacino put a room full of Hollywood stars a little bit on edge to close out the 96th Academy Awards.Rather than listing all 10 nominees while presenting the best picture Oscar, or offering a conventional “And the Oscar goes to,” Pacino simply said “Here it comes” before slowly opening the envelope.“And my eyes see ‘Oppenheimer,’” Pacino said next, to tepid applause from an audience that seemed unsure whether that statement was the most important proclamation of the night.“Yes, yes,” Pacino, 83, said of the movie that was considered the favorite to win best picture and finished with a night-best seven awards.At that point, on came the music, and cheers rose from the crowd. The camera cut to Christopher Nolan, the film’s director, and Emma Thomas, one of its producers, as they stood up and made their way to the stage.Did Jimmy Kimmel see it coming? Just minutes earlier, Kimmel, the host of the ceremony, made a joke about needing to tear up the envelope that said Emma Stone had won best actress for “Poor Things,” an allusion to the epic “Moonlight”/“La La Land” best picture mix-up of 2017.After the ceremony, Bill Kramer, the chief executive of the academy, said he was pleased with Pacino’s performance. “Everything went beautifully,” Kramer said. “He was just having fun up there.”Nicole Sperling More

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    Cillian Murphy Wins His First Oscar for ‘Oppenheimer’

    Cillian Murphy won the Oscar for best actor for his portrayal in “Oppenheimer” of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who developed the atomic bomb and was haunted by its impact.“For better or for worse, we’re all living in Oppenheimer’s world,” Murphy said in his acceptance speech. “So I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers everywhere.”This is Murphy’s first Oscar win and his first nomination. He was a top contender at this year’s Academy Awards after winning a slew of other awards, including best actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, best leading actor at the BAFTA Film Awards and best actor in a drama at the Golden Globes.“It’s been the wildest, most exhilarating, most powerfully satisfying journey you’ve taken me on over the last 20 years,” he said, thanking “Oppenheimer” producer Emma Thomas and director Christopher Nolan, who also won his first Oscar on Sunday night. “I owe you more than I can say.”The contest for best actor had developed into a two-way race between Murphy and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”), who won best actor at the Critics Choice Awards and best actor in a musical or comedy film at the Golden Globes.Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), Colman Domingo (“Rustin”) and Jeffrey Wright (“American Fiction”) were also nominated in the category. More

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    Emma Stone Wins Her Second Best Actress Oscar for ‘Poor Things’

    Last year’s Oscar for best actress went to a universe-hopping laundromat owner who at one point appears to have hot dogs for fingers. Naturally, this year had to go even stranger.The award went to Emma Stone for her performance in the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed “Poor Things” as Bella Baxter, once dead but resurrected by a mad scientist, who implanted the brain of her unborn child into her skull.The result is a full-grown woman with the impulses of an infant, until she progresses into a child testing boundaries and searching for independence in a world where men are accustomed to dictating women’s lives.Stone, who was visibly overwhelmed in her acceptance speech, shared a conversation she had with Lanthimos, who is a frequent collaborator.“The other night I was panicking, as you can kind of see happens a lot, that maybe something like this could happen,” she said, “and Yorgos said to me, ‘Please take yourself out of it.’ And he was right because it’s not about me. It’s about a team that came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.”The victory is Stone’s second for best actress: she won for her turn as a striving Hollywood performer in the 2016 musical “La La Land.”In the fantastical, absurdist world of “Poor Things,” Stone’s Bella Baxter is charmingly blunt, brash and intent on being free to experiment. In one memorable scene at a restaurant in Portugal, Baxter launches into a wild and silly dance, inspiring her lover (played by Mark Ruffalo) to furiously try matching her vigor.“She’s drinking up the world around her in such a unique and beautiful way that I just dream I could,” Stone, 35, said in an interview with The Times in November.This past year was something of a crossroads for Stone’s career as she made a sharp turn away from the kind of mainstream roles that made her famous (“Easy A,” “The Help”). On TV, Stone starred alongside Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie in “The Curse,” a satire of a home renovation show filled with little absurdities that almost rival the duck-headed bulldog in “Poor Things.”Baxter’s unusual character arc provided Stone a unique actor’s playground as her character learned how to walk and talk, discovered her sexuality, learned the deepest horrors of humanity, and sought to forge her own life as an adult.“I felt like I kind of lived with her for a long time,” Stone told Vanity Fair. “Yorgos and I still talk about how we miss her now.” More

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    Billie Eilish (and ‘Barbie’) Win an Oscar for ‘What Was I Made For?’

    Billie Eilish’s tender, yearning ballad “What Was I Made For?” won for original song, ensuring that “Barbie” will leave the ceremony with at least one Oscar.The soundtrack for Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster film became a powerhouse unto itself, loaded with songs by A-list stars. “What Was I Made For?,” which Eilish wrote with her brother, Finneas O’Connell, won song of the year at the Grammys and was the favorite in this category at the Oscars. This is the siblings’ second original-song Oscar. They previously won for “No Time to Die” from the 2021 James Bond blockbuster.“I was not expecting this,” Eilish said in a speech. “I’m so grateful for this song and for this movie and the way that it made me feel. And this goes out to everyone who was affected by the movie and how incredible it is.”In a sign of the strength of the “Barbie” soundtrack, the winner’s stiffest Oscars competition may have been another song from the film, “I’m Just Ken,” Ryan Gosling’s doleful lamentation. Gosling, and a large ensemble that included some of the film’s Kens, performed the number on Sunday night.“Barbie,” which has grossed $1.4 billion at the box office worldwide, came into the evening with eight Oscar nominations but was a favorite only in the song category. More

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    Oscars 2024 Winners: Updating List

    The list of winners for the 96th Academy Awards.Follow our live updates for the 2024 Oscars.After a very long and busy awards season, we have finally made it to end — wrapping things up with the biggest night for film honors.The 96th Academy Awards are being presented at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Like last year, the show is hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, with ABC broadcasting the ceremony live.Come for the star-studded roster of presenters and nominees, stay for Ryan Gosling’s live performance of “I’m Just Ken.” And, follow along live with our critics and reporters.Read below for a full list of winners that will be updated as announcements are made.Best Supporting ActressDa’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”Read our reviewOriginal Screenplay“Anatomy of a Fall”Adapted Screenplay“American Fiction”Animated Feature“The Boy and the Heron”Read our reviewProduction Design“Poor Things”Costume Design“Poor Things”Makeup and Hairstyling“Poor Things”International Feature“The Zone of Interest,” United KingdomAnimated Short“War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko” More

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    Vanessa Hudgens Reveals Her Pregnancy on Oscars Red Carpet

    The actress Vanessa Hudgens, one of the hosts of ABC’s Oscars pre-show, included a subtle pregnancy announcement in her coverage of the red carpet on Sunday evening.“I clearly have a lot to be excited for,” she said at the beginning of the broadcast, positioning her hands on her stomach.Ms. Hudgens, 35, wore a fitted black Vera Wang gown with long sleeves and a turtleneck. She did not explicitly discuss her pregnancy during the broadcast, instead keeping her attention on the stars she was interviewing.A representative for Ms. Hudgens did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.This is the third consecutive year that Ms. Hudgens, who became a household name with her role in “High School Musical” in 2006, has hosted “The Oscars Red Carpet Show” on ABC.Ms. Hudgens married Cole Tucker, a baseball player, in Mexico in December. (For that occasion, she also wore a streamlined Vera Wang gown.) This will be the couple’s first child.During the broadcast, Ms. Hudgens traded off interviews with her co-host, Julianne Hough, and acknowledged that the ceremony was taking place on Indigenous land. Her interview subjects included Emma Stone, Simu Liu, Ariana Grande and America Ferrera.When her coverage shift concluded, she held a microphone in one bejeweled hand and beamed into the camera. “That was a lot of fun,” she said. More

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    Here Are the 2024 Oscars Host, Presenters and Performers

    You may have heard that “Oppenheimer,” with a pack-leading 13 nominations, is a lock to win best picture. This is accurate. But even if we’re certain how the night will end, the getting there is the fun part. Here’s what to expect:Who is hosting?Jimmy Kimmel is back for a second consecutive year, his fourth time overall as host of the ceremony. That ties him with Whoopi Goldberg and Jack Lemmon, but puts him behind Johnny Carson (with five) and Billy Crystal (nine). And it’s still miles back from the record-holder, Bob Hope, with 19.Who is presenting?The “Field of Dreams” format is back! For the first time since the 2009 ceremony, five past winners in each acting category will introduce the five current nominees for each award, and then announce the winner together.The academy never reveals which presenters will be announcing which awards before the ceremony, but all four of last year’s acting winners — Brendan Fraser (actor), Michelle Yeoh (actress), Ke Huy Quan (supporting actor) and Jamie Lee Curtis (supporting actress) — are in the presenter lineup.Also set to take the Dolby stage on Sunday night: Mahershala Ali, Bad Bunny, Nicolas Cage, Chris Hemsworth, Dwayne Johnson, Michael Keaton, Jennifer Lawrence, Matthew McConaughey, Rita Moreno, Lupita Nyong’o, Octavia Spencer, Ramy Youssef and Zendaya.Who will be performing?All five of the best original song nominees will be represented: “I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie” (performed by Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson); “The Fire Inside” from “Flamin’ Hot” (performed by Becky G); “It Never Went Away” from “American Symphony” (performed by Jon Batiste); “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon” (performed by Scott George and the Osage Singers); and “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie” (performed by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell). More

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    Paolo Taviani, Half of a Famed Italian Filmmaking Duo, Dies at 92

    He and his brother Vittorio made films, including “Padre Padrone,” that mixed neorealism with a lyrical, almost magical sense of storytelling.Paolo Taviani, who with his brother Vittorio made some of Italy’s most acclaimed films of the last half century — including “Padre Padrone,” which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977 — died on Feb. 29 in Rome. He was 92.His son, Ermanno Taviani, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was pulmonary edema.The Taviani brothers emerged in the late 1950s as part of a generation of Italian filmmakers — including Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Gillo Pontecorvo — who were inspired by the country’s Neorealist movement but determined to push beyond it. (Vittorio Taviani died in 2018.)Though the brothers came from an urbane, intellectual family — their father was a lawyer, their mother a teacher — their work celebrated traditional life in the Italian countryside, where they were raised. “Padre Padrone,” for example, tells the story of a boy’s struggle between the demands of his overbearing father, who wants him to be a farmer, and his own dreams of becoming a linguist.The Taviani brothers’ “Padre Padrone” won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977.Radiotelevisione Italiana, via Everett CollectionThey injected their films with a sense of spectacle that set them apart from the austerity of Neorealist predecessors like their idol, Roberto Rossellini, who in turn championed their work and, as the president of the Cannes jury in 1977, helped ensure that “Padre Padrone” won the festival’s coveted Palme D’or prize. It was a surprise victory in a field that included another Italian film, “A Special Day.”“Rossellini allowed us to understand our own experiences, to truly comprehend what we had lived,” Paolo Taviani told The International Herald Tribune in 1993. “To comprehend it in a way which would have been impossible had we not seen his films. And we felt that if film had this sort of power, we wanted to master film.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More