Priyanka gives away Oscar to ‘Mad Max: Fury Road

The film is still up Oscars for Best Director (George Miller) and Best Picture. Alejandro G. Inarritu won best directing for his frontier epic “The Revenant“, which came in with a leading 12 nods.

“Thank you so much for your support and belief in me”, Vikander said of director Tom Hooper. It was also a first for Brie Larson when she won an Oscar in the Best Actress category for her portrayal of a kidnapped girl imprisoned by a psychopath in “Room“. Alicia Vikander, a relative newcomer took home the award for Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl.

McKay thanked the Hollywood studio Paramount for taking a risk on a movie about “financial esoterica” and introduced a sharp political note when he said: “If you don’t want big money to control government, don’t vote for candidates that take money from big banks or weirdo billionaires”. “Making “The Revenant” was about man’s relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history” he said.

Writing awards went to Spotlight and The Big Short. Meanwhile Fury Road also missed out on the Best Picture Oscar, which went to Spotlight in something of a boilover.

Racial themes and barbs about the selection of an all-white acting nominee line-up for a second year were a running theme of the show, dubbed “the white People’s Choice awards” by Rock, an outspoken black comedian.

But the 6 awards that it did pick up makes Mad Max the most successful film of the year, easily beating out other multiple victor The Revenant (three awards), and Spotlight (two).

Hollywood’s diversity crisis has loomed large over awards season and the big question going into the 88th annual Academy Awards was whether it would dominate the ceremony, too. No”, he said. “Is it “fetch me lemonade” racist? No…

“I (am) very lucky to be here tonight, but unfortunately many others haven’t had the same luck”, Inarritu said, expressing the hope that, in the future, skin color would become as irrelevant as the length of one’s hair. It’s like: “We like you Rhonda, but you’re not a Kappa”.

29 February 2016 The dystopian action movie Mad Max: Fury Road already has more than one Southern African connection: it was filmed in Namibia; some of the post-production was done by BlackGinger, the Cape Town animation and visual effects studio; and it stars South African-born actress Charlize Theron. “When they’re grandmother is swinging from the tree, it’s really hard to care about best documentary foreign short”.