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Leonardo DiCaprio finally wins
best actor
Host Chris Rock lets fly with
jokes about race
"Mad Max: Fury Road" may
have won more honors at the
88th Academy Awards, leading
all films with six. "The
Revenant" won some major
prizes, including the first Oscar
for actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
But when the last award of the
evening was read, it was the little
film about Boston Globe
investigative reporters digging
into a sex abuse scandal
involving Catholic priests that
was left standing.
"This film gave a voice to
survivors," producer Michael
Sugar said. "And this film
amplifies that voice, which we
hope will become a choir that
will resonate all the way to the
Vatican."
It was one of just two awards
"Spotlight" took home. The film
also won for Tom McCarthy and
Josh Singer's original screenplay.
But until that moment, it looked
like "Revenant," about a
JF mag!
vengeful trapper in the 1820s,
was going to go all the way.
Alejandro González Iñárritu
notched his second straight Oscar
in the directing category; he's the
first person to pull off that feat
since Joseph L. Mankiewicz in
1949-50. The film's Emmanuel
Lubezki also kept a streak going,
winning his third straight Oscar
for cinematography.
But the big story was DiCaprio,
who finally won an Oscar with
his fifth acting nomination.
After taking some time to thank
Iñárritu, co-star Tom Hardy and
director Martin Scorsese, among
others, DiCaprio put in a plug for
environmentalism.
"Climate change is real. It is
happening right now; we needed
to go to the tip of South America
to find snow. ... It is the most
urgent threat facing our entire
species," he said. "We need to
support leaders around the world
who speak for indigenous people,
for humanity, the voices who
have been drowned out by the
politics of greed. Do not take this
planet for granted. ... I do not
take this night for granted. Thank
you."