Oscars goes hip

The Aviator won five trophies, the most of the evening, although the influential director was again shut out of the best picture and director races. It was Eastwood’s night. At 74, he became the oldest director to earn the top honor. “I’m just a kid,” Eastwood said. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.”

Jamie Foxx, who seamlessly blended his piano playing with Ray Charles’ vocal tracks, collected the best actor Oscar for starring as the legendary rhythm and blues singer in the biopic, Ray. Foxx thanked Charles, who died last June, and his late grandmother, who taught him to be both an actor and a “Southern gentleman”. Foxx also was nominated for best supporting actor for Collateral, but lost it to Million Dollar Baby’s Morgan Freeman, who played the ex-boxer who managed Eastwood’s gym. Freeman’s first win won him a standing ovation. “This is the fight I’ve been fighting all my life. This isn’t serendipity, in terms of being here,” he said.

The victories for the Black actors comes three years after Denzel Washington (Training Day) and Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball) won top prizes.

But it was Million Dollar Baby’s evening. “I’m just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream,” Swank said, describing both her life and that of her character. —LAT-WP