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Hollywood's golden mystery man

The venerable statuette, officially named the Academy Award of Merit, is the child of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which was created in 1927 as a small industry body to promote films.

Initially made up of 36 members with actor Douglas Fairbanks as its first president, the newly founded body created the golden trophy to honour performances by the industry's leading actors, actresses and directors.

An art director from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, Cedric Gibbons, was selected to design the statuette - the figure of a knight standing on a reel of film, his hands gripping a sword.

From these humble beginnings was born an award that would become a global symbol of excellence. The first Academy Awards were held on May 16, 1929 at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel.

They consisted of a simple dinner banquet attended by around 270 guests and Fairbanks handed out the 15 statuettes in just 15 minutes. Ironically, the birthplace of the Oscars is just a short stroll from the Kodak Theatre, where more than 3,300 stars and Hollywood powerbrokers will gather for Sunday's 80th annual Academy Awards ceremony.

Around 50 Oscars will be handed out during the glittering three-hour show, which over the years has expanded into a global spectacle with a red-carpet arrivals line that has become the world's most glamorous fashion show.

Since the first awards ceremony, around 2,500 of the trophies have been handed out in an awards ceremony that has become bigger, glitzier and more glamourous over the years, with the exception of wartime shows.

The early editions of the statues were bronze, but during the World War II metals shortage, the trophies were made of plaster. Those were later redeemed for the now gold-plated ones.

The trophy, standing 34 centimeters (13.5 inches) tall and weighing 3.85 kilos (8.5 pounds), wasn't always called an Oscar, but his form has not changed since his birth, except when his pedestal was raised 1945. But the origin of the statuette's nickname is unclear.

'I was really blind-sided'

IF IT truly is a pleasure just to be nominated for an Oscar, Alan Menken must be Hollywood's happiest man.

The co-composer of songs from Walt Disney's musical hit 'Enchanted' has three of the five nominations in the original-song category going into Sunday's Academy Awards.

While that is not a record, three of Henry Krieger's songs from 'Dreamgirls' were nominated just last year, news of the triple play still took Menken by surprise.

'My publicist, Ray Costa, called me and said, 'Alan, you're nominated for 'Happy Working Song' ... and 'So Close' ... and 'That's How You Know, ...' Menken said at the Oscar nominees luncheon in early February. 'I was really blind-sided, completely blind-sided. Three nominations. I said, 'Now we're gonna lose.'

Menken said he expects the three 'Enchanted' entries, co-written with Stephen Schwartz, may split the vote, improving odds for the other song contenders at the ceremony: 'Falling Slowly' from 'Once' and 'Raise It Up' from 'August Rush.'

Last year, the three 'Dreamgirls' songs lost out to Melissa Etheridge's 'I Need to Wake Up' from 'An Inconvenient Truth.'

Then again, Menken and his late co-writer Howard Ashman got three 1991 nods for 'Beauty and the Beast,' and won for the title tune.

Menken, 58, also has Oscars for co-writing 'Under the Sea' from 'The Little Mermaid,' 'A Whole New World' from 'Aladdin' and 'Colours of the Wind' from 'Pocahontas.'

'Those four Oscars live in my studio, and they're all in a cabinet,' Menken said. 'And I occasionally let them out and let people hold them.'

Jon Stewart to provide Oscars laughs

TELEVISION COMEDIAN Jon Stewart will be injecting some stinging satire into the Oscars on Sunday, giving a political flavour to the Hollywood extravaganza in a presidential election year.

The 45-year-old returns to host proceedings at Los Angeles' Kodak Theatre, two years after making his debut at the 78th Annual Academy Awards in 2006.

That performance received mixed reviews, with some critics saying Stewart had earned the right to be a permanent host while another railed against the comic's 'smug humourlessness.'

What is unarguable is that US television viewing figures for 2006's Oscars were the second lowest in history, and the darling of US liberals will need to be at his funniest this year to win over neutrals.

In 2006, Stewart took aim at a line-up of movies bristling with controversial themes, from the gay cowboys of 'Brokeback Mountain' to the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in 'Munich.' 'Steven Spielberg is here. A best-director nomination for 'Munich', a tremendous film, and I congratulate you, sir,' Stewart said.

'From the man who also gave us 'Schindler's List'. 'Schindler's List' and 'Munich'. I think I speak for all Jews when I say I can't wait to see what happens to us next. Trilogy!'

Since 1999, Stewart has hosted the satirical cable TV news programme 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,' which has a small audience but has developed a cult following and is required viewing among US liberals.

While his show targets a niche market, the New Yorker who was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz has attracted widespread US media attention for his merciless and unflinching prods at the administration of President George W. Bush. Stewart joins a select group of including Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Bob Hope, comedian Chris Rock and Ellen DeGeneres to have hosted the Oscars.

What's a traditional score?

WHAT IS a 'traditional score,' and why are they saying such terrible things about it?

Last year the dictum from filmmakers seemed to be a unanimous 'We don't want a traditional score!' This year however, aside from James Newton Howard's stealthy, ambient work for 'Michael Clayton,' the remaining nominees for best original score - Dario Marianelli's 'Atonement,' Michael Giacchino's 'Ratatouille,' Marco Beltrami's '3:10 to Yuma' and even Alberto Iglesias' 'The Kite Runner' - all feature strong orchestral writing and melodies along with their innovations.

'3:10 to Yuma' manages to pay homage to the roots of its genre while employing first-time nominee Marco Beltrami's knack for finding unusual approaches to instrumentation and recording.

'I think the biggest challenge was to be aware of the genre, be aware of Western scores that had come before and the stylised nature of that, but to do something original that wasn't a pastiche of everything else,' Beltrami says. 'So it had the flavour of an older sound but maybe in a more modern setting.'

Like many of his peers, Beltrami received orders from director James Mangold to avoid a traditional sound. 'Jim didn't want a large, orchestral, epic score - that's not what the picture needed. He wanted a smaller, more unique sound and cool grooves that would complement the picture almost as a character. 'I did use some strings in it, but when we recorded the strings at Abbey Road, we had close mikes set up and room mikes set up, and all the room mikes were dialed out in favor of the real closeness of the sound, the close mikes. So it doesn't have a big sense of space but more of an intimate sense of grittiness.'

Loser is already a winner

AFTER 19 previous Oscar nominations and no wins, the man with the unenviable record of being the biggest loser in Academy Awards history has given up preparing acceptance speeches.

'If I win this year I plan to say the first thing that comes into my head,' says Kevin O'Connell, 51, nominated for the 20th time at this year's Oscars for his sound mixing work on the blockbuster 'Transformers.'

No other Oscar nominee has suffered such serial disappointment as O'Connell, who was first nominated as part of the sound team on 'Terms of Endearment' in 1984 and was most recently overlooked last year for 'Apocalypto.'

But while years of near-misses might have broken the spirit of other nominees, O'Connell says the thrill of being nominated is reward in itself. 'A lot of people always talk about the 'biggest loser' and stuff but to be honest with you I've never seen it that way,' O'Connell said. 'I hope the message is that you should never give up on your dream... Having your work recognised by colleagues in your profession as being in the top five of the industry of a given year is exciting in itself. For the 30 or so days between the nominations being announced and the Academy Awards taking place I feel like I am floating on a cloud. And that feeling never goes away.'

Until last year, O'Connell had written a speech in advance of the Oscars just in case. This year he plans to ad-lib if he is called onto the stage. And if he does land the Oscars statuette, expect him to pay tribute to his late mother, the woman who helped him into the movie industry.