Birdman rises to the top at the Oscars

Birdman truly does fly. A literally soaring backstage dramedy about a fading Hollywood star's struggles to mount a Broadway show and hang on to his sanity, Birdman - full title Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance - won best picture at the 87th Academy Awards last night at the Dolby Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Its director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, also won for achievement in directing.

In all, Birdman took four Oscars.

The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson's colorful, calamitous between-the-wars screwball farce, won four awards, and Whiplash, about a jazz-drumming prodigy and his seriously screwed-up teacher, lodged multiple wins in the early going of the ceremonies.

Surprising no one, Julianne Moore received the best actress trophy for her heartbreaking performance in Still Alice as a Columbia University linguistics professor - a wife, a mother - diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. It was Moore's first win in five nominations. Accepting the Oscar, Moore spoke movingly of the film's writing/directing duo, spouses Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Glatzer, who brought the experiences of his own degenerative disease - ALS - to the Still Alice screenplay, was hospitalized last week.

Eddie Redmayne, the Brit who brought famous ponderer-of-the-cosmos Stephen Hawking to life in The Theory of Everything, was handed the best actor Oscar. The film begins with Hawking bicycling like a demon around Cambridge University, but the brilliant graduate student begins to show signs of ALS, the degenerative disease that put Hawking in a wheelchair. The actor trained with a dance choreographer to get the physical gestures of an atrophying body just right, and brought wit and compassion to the role.

Neil Patrick Harris, host of four Tony and two Emmy Awards shows, proved a convivial initiate to the pomp and circumstance of the Oscars, starting off by announcing, "Tonight we honor the best and the whitest - sorry, brightest," a jokey acknowledgment that not a single person of color was among the 20 acting nominees.

The newbie host then kicked into the musical-theaterish "Moving Pictures" number, weaving together the titles and plot points of the eight best picture candidates. A sniper training his gun on an Iraqi boy - not exactly toe-tapping fun. Anna Kendrick joined Harris for a duet that was quickly hijacked by Jack Black, who jumped onstage to bellow some verse about the evils of social media and watching movies on a smartphone. Two awards into the show, Harris tried out a Reese Witherspoon pun.

Later, Harris stripped to his tighty-whities, à la Michael Keaton in Birdman. Unfortunately, the same idea - right down to passing Whiplash star Miles Teller banging on his drum kit - was done Saturday, Oscar Eve, at the Independent Sprit Awards, with host Fred Armisen doing the Birdman parody.

J.K. Simmons, the veteran character actor with a vast Broadway, TV, and big-screen resumé, took the first award of the night, the supporting actor trophy, for his turn in the jazz-driven Whiplash, bringing mad intensity to the role of a tyrannical music conservatory professor who hurls invective - and furniture - at his students. Simmons used his acceptance speech to thank his wife and their "above-average children," and then told the "billion people or so" watching the telecast to reach out to their moms and dads. Parenting tips at the Oscars!

In the supporting actress race, Patricia Arquette won out over a daunting list of colleagues (Laura Dern, Keira Knightley, Emma Stone, and the 19-times-nominated Meryl Streep) to take the Oscar for her portrayal of the mother, Olivia, in Boyhood. Arquette brought the struggles of a single parent to life with heart and soul. Olivia's flaws (bad judge of men) and ambitions (return to college and become a teacher) made her one of the few fully formed female characters in a year of male-centric stories. With her glasses on, Arquette read off her thank-yous and called for wage equality for women.

The original song Oscar went to "Glory," from the Martin Luther King Jr. bio, Selma. Accepting the prize, performers John Legend and Common lamented the discrimination based on "race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation" that is still so much in evidence.

"Nina Simone said it's an artist's duty to reflect the times we're in," Legend said. "Selma is now because the struggle for justice is right now."

A snub in the Oscar telecast's "In Memoriam" segment: Joan Rivers, the comedienne who delivered caustic red carpet couture critiques over years of Oscar telecasts and other awards shows, was left out of the tribute. An oversight, or revenge?

Disney's Big Hero 6, the futuristic superhero fantasy based on the Marvel comic book, won the best animated feature Oscar. Last year, the studio took the same award, for the musical Frozen.

Director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki, like Disney's animators, also enjoyed back-to-back wins. Last year, he won the cinematography Oscar for Gravity. On Sunday night, Lubezki claimed the Academy Award for the virtuoso, one-continuous-take illusion of Birdman.

Capping a season of nonstop kudos, Citizenfour - Laura Poitras' you-are-there account of NSA contractor Edward Snowden's historic leak of top-secret State Department and Defense Department files - won the Oscar for documentary feature. Director Oliver Stone is shooting a dramatization of the Snowden story, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the intelligence systems administrator-turned-whistleblower, or traitor, depending on whom you talk to. (Melissa Leo plays Poitras.) Snowden is scheduled for release on Dec. 25, which makes it eligible for consideration for the 88th Academy Awards a year from now.

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Here are the winners of selected Academy Awards. The full list is available at www.oscars.com

Best Picture: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).

Best Actor: Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

Best Actress: Julianne Moore, Still Alice

Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Animated Feature Film:  Big Hero 6

Adapted Screenplay:  The Imitation Game

Original Screenplay: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Foreign Language Film:  Ida (Poland)

Documentary: CitizenFour

Original Score: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Original Song: "Glory," Selma

Cinematography: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Costume Design: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Documentary Short: Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1

Animated Short: "Feast"

Editing: Whiplash

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