'The Artist,' 'Hugo' big winners at Academy Awards

"The Artist" become only the second silent film ever to win best picture at tonight's 84th annual Academy Awards, during which the movie picked up five awards, as did Martin Scorsese's "Hugo."

"The Artist" was named best picture.

The star-studded ceremony, led by host Billy Crystal, was held tonight in the location formerly known as the Kodak Theatre. Crystal, as he has apt to do, opened the show with a pre-taped segment in which he was inserted in many of this year's nominated films.

The show, which seemed to maintain a quick pace throughout, was punctuated by mostly short speeches and mostly funny interludes.

In addition to best picture, "The Artist" won for best director (Michel Hazanavicius) while French actor Jean Dujardin beat out a tough line-up of nominees led by George Clooney. Also taking home Oscars for their work on the film were Ludovic Bource for original score and Mark Bridges for costume design.

Meanwhile, "Hugo" was awarded for cinematography, art direction, sound mixing, sound editing and visual effects.

In another hotly contested race, 17-time nominee Meryl Streep took home the Oscar for best lead actress for her portrayal of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher over Viola Davis, who was nominated for her work in "The Help."

Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland, who were tasked with transforming Streep into Thatcher, were honored  with the best makeup Academy Award.

The supporting actor and actress categories both went to the perceived frontrunners in Christopher Plummer for "The Beginners" and Octavia Spencer for "The Help."

'Rango' the big winner at the Annie Awards

While traditionally Dreamworks Animation has ruled the Annie Awards while Pixar takes home the gold at the Academy Awards, it was Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies which drew first blood this year with Gore Verbinski's "Rango" the big winner at the 39th annual Annie Awards, which were held Saturday evening at UCLA's Royce Hall.

"Rango" was the big winner Saturday.

"Rango" took home the awards for Animated Feature, Writing in a Feature Production, Editing in a Feature Production and Character Design in a Feature Production.

While Verbinski shared the writing award, he lost out in the directing category to Jennifer Yuh Nelson for Dreamworks Animation's "Kung Fu Panda 2." That film was also awarded for Production Design in a Feature Production.

"Tintin," which recently took home Best Animated Feature at the Golden Globes, was awarded twice Saturday for Music in a Feature Production for John Williams and Animated Effects in an Animated Production. Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg's first foray into feature animation was snubbed and will not be among the nominees for the Academy Awards later this month.

In the television categories, "The Simpsons" took home the top prize for Best General Audience Animated Television Production.

See below for a full list of this year's winners.

Academy Awards: Josh Duhamel, Megan Fox travel the globe in search of Billy Crystal

When the Oscars' producers announced late last year that they had secured Billy Crystal to return and host for a ninth time, they didn't mention all of the work--and miles--that had gone into the quest.

According to the award show's official trailer, which hit the net yesterday, "Transformers" co-stars Josh Duhamel and Megan Fox traveled the globe in search of the elusive comedian.

See for yourself:

Academy announces eight science and technical awards

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that eight scientific and technical achievements represented by 28 individual award recipients will be honored at its annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation at the Beverly Wilshire on Saturday, Feb. 11.

The ceremony will be held Feb. 11.

Unlike other Academy Awards to be presented this year, achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards need not have been developed and introduced during 2011. Rather, the achievements must demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures.

The Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievements are:

Technical Achievement Award (Academy Certificate)

To Andrew Clinton and Mark Elendt for the invention and integration of micro-voxels in the Mantra software.
This work allowed, for the first time, unified and efficient rendering of volumetric effects such as smoke and clouds, together with other computer graphics objects, in a micro-polygon imaging pipeline.