'Argo,' Jennifer Lawrence make their points at the Oscars

The film academy voted the best picture Oscar to "Argo" and by extension to director Ben Affleck, who gave the final speech of the night and was emotional about the win. Jennifer Lawrence won the best actress Oscar for "Silver Linings Playbook," in what the stats analysts imagined to be the closest of the top races. (The handicappers and predictors had no data on actual votes.) Lawrence is 22 and now a bona fide Hollywood star, if she wasn't before. Daniel Day-Lewis won his third best acting Oscar, for "Lincoln" — no actor has ever won more Oscars in the lead actor category.

Anne Hathaway won her first Oscar, as a supporting actress in "Les Miserables." Christoph Waltz won his second supporting actor Oscar for "Django Unchained." "Amour," as widely expected, won the foreign language Oscar. Adele won the original song Oscar for "Skyfall." And there was a rare tie in the sound editing category, with Oscars going both to "Skyfall" and "Zero Dark Thirty." That was the only award for "Zero" all night.

Lawrence neglected to thank her movie's godfather, Harvey Weinstein, on stage. She quickly tried to remedy that omission backstage. Maybe she was nervous: she tripped on her dress on her way up to accept the Oscar.

In my opinion, the show got off to a very ragged start with Seth MacFarlane as host. There was a lame and way-too-long opening skit with William Shatner, a MacFarlane song about actresses and boobs that wasn't very funny and dragged the class level lower, and another tired assortment of Jewish jokes and gay references. I know what would solve that: new material! He just wasn't funny very often, though I did like the line about some film veteran being around so long she (I think) could remember looking across the Hollywood countryside and seeing nothing but cocaine trees. The big original twist this year was to have First Lady Michelle Obama introduce the best picture category from the White House, then read the winner live. I doubt they will do that again.

The in memoriam section of the show felt a little fresher, introduced by George Clooney, but while everybody else got about ten seconds, Marvin Hamlisch got three minutes because Barbra Sreisand sang "The Way We Were" under a portrait of the composer. There was a pointless distraction of having a character from "Ted" present in one category, apparently because it was MacFarlane's movie, and there seemed like an amateurish number of homages to the previous work of the show's producers.

The snags struck even before the show started. A broken pipe in a women's bathroom flooded the lobby of the Dolby Theatre about 30 minutes before show time. "The pipe exploded when the mother of Kief Davidson, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary short 'Open Heart,' flushed a toilet, sending water into the lobby where nearly every nominee and studio head was walking in," said The Wrap.

Full list of winners:

Actor in a Supporting Role: Christoph Waltz, "Django Unchained"
Best Animated Short Film: "Paperman"
Best Animated Feature Film: "Brave"
Achievement in Cinematography: "Life of Pi," Claudio Miranda
Achievement in Visual Effects: "Life of Pi"
Achievement in Costume Design: "Anna Karenina," Jacqueline Durran
Achievement in Makeup & Hairstyling: "Les Misérables"
Best Live-Action Short Film: "Curfew"
Best Documentary Short Subject: "Inocente"
Best Documentary Feature: "Searching for a Sugar Man"
Best Foreign-Language Film: "Amour" (Austria)
Achievement in Sound Mixing: "Les Misérables"
Achievement in Sound Editing: "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Skyfall"
Actress in a Supporting Role: Anne Hathaway, "Les Miserables"
Achievement in Film Editing: "Argo"
Achievement in Production Direction: "Lincoln"
Original Score: "Life of Pi," Mychael Danna
Original Song: "Skyfall," Adele Adkins & Paul Epworth
Adapted Screenplay: "Argo," Chris Terrio
Original Screenplay: "Django Unchained," Quentin Tarantino
Achievement in Directing: Ang Lee, "Life of Pi"
Actress in a Leading Role: Jennifer Lawrence, "Silver Linings Playbook"
Actor in a Leading Role: Daniel Day-Lewis, "Lincoln"
Best Motion Picture: "Argo"

Post edited for typos