Oscar Award Academy: the Winners are

AP reports the Award Academy winners

Heath Ledger won the supporting-actor Academy Award for “The Dark Knight,” while best-picture favorite “Slumdog Millionaire” cruised to six wins in an Oscar evening that was following the script of earlier Hollywood honors where the underdog tale dominated.

Penelope Cruz claimed the evening’s first prize, supporting actress, for her role as a tempestuous artist in Woody Allen’s Spanish romance “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” while the robot romance “WALL-E” won for feature-length animation.

For his demented reinvention of Batman villain the Joker, Ledger became only the second actor ever to win posthumously, his triumph coming exactly 13 months after his death from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs on Oscar nominations day last year.

I haven’t watched it, but based on many reviews, it really deserves the Academy Award

Slumdog has ten Oscar nominations, not as many as Benjamin Button, which leads with thirteen. However, having captured top honors at every awards show to date, Slumdog Millionaire is easily the favorite to win the Academy Award for best picture.

Slumdog Millionaire, the little $14 million picture shot in the slums of India, is on it’s way to grossing $100 million. “I’d never been to India,” says Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle. “Because India is a democracy, the slums have become incredibly powerful places politically. They have a lot of people in them. There are a lot of votes in a small area.”

A.R. Rahman got the double awards for best music and song:

Indian music director AR Rahman’s score for Slumdog Millionaire has won an Oscar for best music, and a second for best song. The BBC’s Soutik Biswas discusses what makes Rahman tick.

… the jingle maker-turned-musician has finally got recognition as India’s first truly global film music composer with his score for Danny Boyle’s sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire.

The score is an untidy smorgasbord of hip hop, Bollywood remix and signature pop anthem. But it works because it follows the film’s giddy pace, the darkness of its characters, its portrayal of lives on the edge.

Slumdog Millionaire one sequence

Watch the Slumdog Millionaire Trailer