Oscar

This being such a wacky Oscar year, we thought we'd dig deep into the annals of the Academy Awards and find some rare moments to share. And the winners are: MOST SELF-SERVING MOMENT: This one's a tie, between Sally Field, who blurted out "You like me, you really like me" when accepting her 1984 best-actress prize for "Places in the Heart" and previous year winner Shirley Mac-Laine's "I deserve this" speech for "Terms of Endearment. " BEST STAND-IN FOR A CELEBRITY: Who can forget 1972, when Sacheen Littlefeather, dressed in Apache garb, refused the best-actor Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando (for "Last Tango in Paris")

EYE-CATCHING Jack Russell performances in "Beginners" and "The Artist" have prompted calls for a special Oscar to recognize dog performances. Why, people have asked, can't they throw Uggie ("The Artist") or Cosmo ("Beginners") a bone? As it turns out, there is already a movie award program for dogs - it's called the Golden Collar Award, and Uggie and Cosmo are up for best actor. (Uggie was actually nominated twice this year, for "The Artist" and his work in "Water for Elephants.

There are real-life politicians: W., as in George, Milk, as in Harvey, Frost/Nixon as in Tricky you-know-who. There are teenage vampires (Twilight) and benevolent E.T.s (The Day the Earth Stood Still). There are talkin' 'toon critters - Bolt, Madagascar 2. And there are Oscar contenders, to be sure - quite possibly Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for best actor (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and actress (Changeling), The Soloist for best picture, and a load of pedigreed literary adaptations.

Four employees of Vision Research of Wayne, N.J., a unit of Berwyn-based Ametek Inc., will receive a science and engineering award from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences at a Feb. 11 ceremony in Beverly Hills. The firm designs and manufactures high-speed digital imaging systems used in digital cinematography for television and movie production. The four winners of the Oscar, Radu Corlan, Petru Pop, Andy Jantzen and Richard Toftness, contributed to the design of the Phantom digital camera, which has a built-in video system that allows scenes to be shot and viewed immediately.

HOLLYWOOD - After winning an Oscar for her portrayal of country music legend June Carter Cash in 2005's "Walk the Line," actress Reese Witherspoon was looking for other ways to challenge herself. So the petite performer turned her sights to producing. She already had some producing experience with the 2003 sequel to "Legally Blonde. " Now she's tackled her first independent feature, "Penelope," a fairy tale about a girl cursed with a pig's snout instead of a nose. (See Gary Thompson's review, Page 50.)

Film-maker Woody Allen picked up two honors and Oscar nominee Bob Hoskins won the best actor award at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. The British film "A Room with a View," based on E.M. Forster's novel of the same name, was named best film for 1986 in the British equivalent of the Academy Awards. Maggie Smith won the best actress award for her role as the heroine's prudish chaperone in "A Room with a View. " She has been nominated in the best supporting actress category in the Oscars, set for Monday.

WHAT DEAL was cut for the prestigious Academy Awards to bestow art status with an Oscar for best song on the simple-minded "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"? Everybody got so upset about the low-class "wardrobe malfunction" by Janet Jackson, but awarding an Oscar for a song on such a topic by no-talent performers lacking any grace is no problem. All the great songwriters - Gershwin, Bernstein, Cohan, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart - must be spinning in their graves. They had class.

LOS ANGELES - Damien Bona earned a law degree from New York University in 1980 but spent only two years practicing law. As he told the Los Angeles Times in 1986, "I had to choose between a job and an obsession. I chose the obsession. " Bona's obsession was the Academy Awards and all of the attendant hoopla, campaigning, gaffes and backstage controversies surrounding Hollywood's annual Big Night, dating to the first Oscar ceremony - a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in 1929.

THE MANHATTAN auction house William Doyle New York Galleries will "Go Hollywood" next month with the sale of James Cagney's 1942 Best Actor Oscar for the toe-tapper musical film "Yankee Doodle Dandy. " A Hollywood legend born to Irish-American parents in lower Manhattan in 1899, Cagney earned his Academy Award for his role as the patriotic showman George M. Cohan. Cagney died in 1986. It was Cagney's sole Oscar, and is expected to fetch from $300,000 to $500,000, according to Doyle spokeswoman Kimberley Cromwell.

Not only Hollywood's version of "Philadelphia" has been nominated for Academy Awards. The real world of depravation, stark poverty and heartbreak in North Philly is also up for an Oscar. Nominated for Best Feature Documentary is "I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School. " The powerful 90-minute film looks at the hardships, struggles and small triumphs at an all-black, inner-city school, the M. Hall Stanton School, at 16th and Cumberland streets. The non-fiction "Philadelphia Story" shows kids picking up crack vials in their school yard, a child abandoned by a drug addicted mother and teachers struggling with few resources.

The pickings are slim this week for new DVD releases, but the film that gave Meryl Streep her first Oscar in almost two decades is among them. The Witches of Oz, Grade C-plus: The latest variation on the Wizard of Oz story has Dorothy Gale (Paulie Rojas) as a writer of children's books living in rural Kansas. Her move to New York, as part of a book deal, proves eye-opening as Dorothy eventually realizes the books she's been writing are actually repressed memories of her time in Oz. Her memories return just in time to stop the Wicked Witch of the West, who needs a key to unlock the power to destroy Oz and New York.

Martin Scorsese's Hugo scooped up five well-earned Oscars on Sunday though none were among the top awards, which went to Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist in the best picture and best director categories. A poetic, magical-mystical paen to all things cinema, Hugo features Asa Butterfield and Chloe Moretz as two wide-eyed preadolescents in 1930s Paris who reexperience the birth of cinema through the eyes of film pioneer Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley). Filled with loving tributes to dozens of films, Hugo , released on DVD this week by Paramount Studios, ranks with the lush, exotic masterpieces of Scorsese's heroes, Michael Powell, and Emeric Pressburger, including The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus . ( www.paramount.com/dvd ; $29.99 DVD; $44.99; Blu-ray/DVD combo; rated PG.)

LOS ANGELES - Shortly after Meryl Streep beat out Viola Davis for the lead actress Academy Award on Sunday night, Disney / ABC Television President Anne Sweeney bumped into Octavia Spencer, Davis' co-star in "The Help. " Sweeney was overheard in an elevator leaving the awards telling Spencer that she was "upset. I feel bad for Viola," Sweeney said. Spencer, who had just won an Oscar herself for supporting actress, asked Sweeney how she thought the upset had happened. "I have my theories," the executive said, without elaborating.

'So tonight, enjoy yourselves," Billy Crystal greeted the audience at the 84th Academy Awards on Sunday night, "because nothing can take the sting out of the world's economic problems like watching millionaires present each other with golden statues. " Deft. Very deft. With about 37 percent of U.S. households tuned in, there was a 4 percent uptick in viewership of the Academy Awards compared to last year. But this year also marked the first time that more Americans watched the Grammys (almost 40 percent)

FOLLOWING ITS first-ever win Sunday night for best foreign film, Iran had a political conundrum: On the one hand, the country wanted to boast about how its film, "The Separation," beat out the Israeli film "Footnote. " (You may take out our nuclear program but we have an Oscar, so there!) On the other hand, bragging about the Oscar would give validity to the importance of Western influences. Director Asghar Farhadi , in his acceptance speech Sunday, said he hoped the Oscar would raise awareness of Iran's sizable artistic achievements and rich culture, which have been "hidden under the heavy dust of politics.

There's going out on a limb, and there's your limb going out. Or you putting out your limb. Angelina Jolie did, and now it's leg-endary. Jolie put out her right leg repeatedly before and during Sunday's Academy Award presentations, and it instantly became an object for satire and sharing. Funny guy Jim Rash, one of the recipients of the best adapted screenplay Oscar, struck a Joliesque pose onstage in his tux. Now, it has become an Internet meme - with a Twitter account: @AngiesRightLeg.

The color of the night at the 84th annual Academy Awards was winter white, as celebrities from Jennifer Lopez to Octavia Spencer worked the red carpet in delicate and sparkling ecru gowns. After a 2012 award season that popped with saturated reds, greens, and blues, Sunday night's gown choices were on the pale side. But on Hollywood's classiest night of the year, we'd expect nothing less. The Oscars are about playing it radiant but low key, so nudes and creams are the obvious choice.

Thomas Langmann was elated. The French film producer had a script he loved. It was about a Hollywood heartthrob, his faithful dog, and a cute bit player. But when he pitched the story to potential financiers in 2010, "the meetings were very short," Langmann said by phone from Paris. "They asked, 'Do you have any other ideas?' " Virtually no one wanted to invest in The Artist . Not only did the film lack a marquee director and recognizable stars, but Langmann also wanted to shoot it as a silent film in black and white set in 1928, the dawn of talking pictures.

The Academy Awards ceremony is, by nature, a rite of self-congratulation and self-love - the movie industry showers plaudits and prizes on itself for the work of the last year, but also for achievements of a lifetime. Venerable stars and filmmakers are honored for the length and breadth of their careers, vintage clips are spliced into thematic reels, the actors, screenwriters, shooters, costumers, composers, and directors who passed away in the preceding 12 months are remembered.