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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood's diversity crisis has loomed large over awards season and the big question going into the 88th annual Academy Awards was whether it would dominate the ceremony, too. It did, of course, but it wasn't alone.
The evening turned out to be a platform not just for racial representation in the movies, led by host Chris Rock's incisive insight and parody, but a wide array of causes, from global warming and bank reform to sexual abuse in church and on campus. It was a subtle plea from the film community that the movies and artists honored at Sunday night's ceremony did have purpose and meaning — even in this second year of #OscarsSoWhite.
The "Spotlight" team, which won the first and last prize of the night — best original screenplay and best picture — and nothing else, celebrated the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of The Boston Globe journalists who exposed sex abuses in the Roman Catholic Church and the conversation the film has renewed around the world.
Leonardo DiCaprio, the forgone best-actor winner for "The Revenant," used the platform to talk about his life's passion outside of acting — climate change, which got a "thank you" from the official White House Instagram account.
Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, who won for best adapted screenplay for "The Big Short," spoke about the need for finance reform.
And Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, whose "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" spoke to the impact of her film.
"This week, the Pakistani prime minister said he would change the law on honor killing of women," said Obaid-Chinoy, who was also the only female director to win an award at Sunday's ceremony. "That is the power of film."
In some ways, the Oscars have always been a place where winners use the podium and their 45 seconds to opine on causes directly or indirectly related to the movies, from Sacheen Littlefeather's speech about Native American rights 43 years ago to Patricia Arquette's call last year for pay equality for women.
But perhaps no ceremony has had such a pointed target, and nothing this year could eclipse #OscarsSoWhite, which was woven into the fabric of the show, thanks to Rock. He launched immediately into the uproar over the lack of diversity in this year's nominees, and didn't let up, dubbing the show "The White People's Choice Awards" at the start.
Rock ensured that the topic remained at the forefront throughout the proceedings, usually finding hearty laughs in the process.
In an award show traditionally known for song-and-dance routines and high doses of glamour, Rock gave the 88th Academy Awards a charged atmosphere, keeping with the outcry that followed a second straight year of all-white acting nominees.
Streaks, broken and extended, dominated much of the evening, with an expected best actress win to Brie Larson for her breakout performance in the mother-son captive drama "Room" and a best supporting actress win for Swedish actress Alicia Vikander for the transgender pioneer tale "The Danish Girl."
Gasps went around the Dolby when Mark Rylance won best supporting actor for Steven Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies" over Sylvester Stallone. Nominated a second time for the role of Rocky Balboa 39 years later, Stallone had been expected to win his first acting Oscar for the "Rocky" sequel "Creed."
The night's most-awarded film, however, went to neither "Spotlight" nor "The Revenant." George Miller's post-apocalyptic chase film, "Mad Max: Fury Road," sped away with six awards in technical categories for editing, makeup, production design, sound editing, sound mixing and costume design.
Alejando Inarritu, whose win for "The Revenant" meant three straight years of Mexican filmmakers winning best director and his second consecutive win, was one of the few recipients to remark passionately on diversity in his acceptance speech.
Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki ("The Revenant") also became the first cinematographer to win three times in a row.
Talk of election was largely absent from the ceremony, though Vice President Joe Biden was met by a standing ovation before talking about sexual assault on college campuses in an introduction to best-song nominee Lady Gaga.
Best animated feature film went to "Inside Out," Pixar's eighth win in the category. Asif Kapadia's Amy Winehouse portrait, "Amy," took best documentary. Hungary's concentration camp drama "Son of Saul" won best foreign language film.
Composer Ennio Morricone, at 87, landed his first competitive Oscar for "The Hateful Eight."
But the wins at times felt secondary to the unflinching host. Rock said he deliberated over joining the Oscars boycott and bowing out as host, but concluded: "The last thing I need is to lose another job to Kevin Hart."
Down the street from the Dolby Theatre, Rev. Al Sharpton led several dozen demonstrators in protest against a second straight year of all-white acting nominees.
The acting nominees restored "OscarsSoWhite" to prominence and led Spike Lee (an honorary Oscar winner this year) and Jada Pinkett Smith to announce that they wouldn't attend the show. Several top African American filmmakers, Ryan Coogler ("Creed") and Ava DuVernay ("Selma") spent the evening not at the Oscars but in Flint, Michigan, raising money for the water-contaminated city.
Rock also sought to add perspective to the turmoil. Rock said this year didn't differ much from Oscar history, but that black people earlier were "too busy being raped and lynched to worry about who won best cinematographer."
In a quick response to the growing crisis, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, led reforms to diversify the academy's overwhelming white and male membership.
In her remarks during the show, Boone Isaacs strongly defended the changes, quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and urging each Oscar attendee to bring greater opportunity to the industry.
Last year's telecast, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, slid 16 percent to 36.6 million viewers, a six-year low. How the controversy, and Rock's head-on approach, will affect ratings for the ABC show is the new big question, not to mention how well the causes of the movies and their artists will live in the conversation beyond Sunday's show.
HOUSTON (AP) — It was the final opportunity for Donald Trump's opponents to change the trajectory of the Republican presidential race before Super Tuesday, and they made the most of it.
The billionaire businessman was positioned at center stage on Thursday night at the GOP debate in Texas as the undisputed front-runner for his party's nomination, having won three consecutive primary contests.
His leading competitors, first-term Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, sought to score a game-changing moment heading into a series of critical March 1 primary contests. Ohio Gov. John Kasich hoped to prove he and his optimistic message have a place in the race, while retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was just trying to get a word in.
Here are the top takeaways from Thursday's high-stakes debate:
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TRUMP UNDER FIRE
It took 10 debates, but Trump finally took fire from all of his leading rivals on national television.
The former reality television star was on his heels for extended stretches as Rubio and Cruz attacked him from either side of his place at center stage. They went after his business record, his personal wealth, a "fake" university that bears his name, his commitment to conservative social issues, his financial donations to Democrats and his lack of specifics on major policies.
Trump was clearly irritated at times, lashing out at his opponents and moderators alike. "Are you going to ask anybody else a question?" an agitated Trump asked at one point.
It was often not the picture of strength that Trump has portrayed for virtually the entire 2016 Republican primary season.
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RUBIO OUTSHINES CRUZ IN ATTACK-DOG ROLE
Marco Rubio wanted to come out as the strongest alternative to Trump on Thursday night. He largely succeeded.
The freshman senator from Florida set the tone early and delivered the quote of the night when he attacked the source of the billionaire businessman's wealth: "If he hadn't inherited $200 million, you know where Donald Trump would be right now? Selling watches in Manhattan," Rubio charged.
Cruz joined the fight against Trump, but was outshined consistently by Rubio, who responded to the urgency of the moment with Super Tuesday less than a week away.
While both Rubio and Cruz were effective, it was notable that Rubio bested his senate colleague on Cruz's home turf. Cruz is coming off three consecutive third-place finishes and could be forced out of the race if he loses to Trump in his home state of Texas on March 1.
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MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, BUT HOW?
Trump has won three consecutive primary contests by promising to "make America great again" — without saying how he'd go about it in much detail. And the Republican front-runner struggled Thursday night when pressed for those details — especially on health care.
Pushed by his competitors and the moderators to explain how he would replace President Barack Obama's signature federal health-care law, Trump repeated his call to allow people to buy health insurance across state lines.
"What else is part of your plan?" Rubio asked as Trump offered the same answer. "Now he's repeating himself," Rubio went on, coyly referencing a previous debate in which Rubio badly hurt himself by repeating the same answer several times.
Given a final opportunity by the moderator to explain another way he'd replace the federal health care law, Trump offered only, "There's nothing to add."
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WHAT ABOUT ME?
Kasich and Carson were ignored for long stretches of Thursday's debate, but each made their mark at times — albeit in very different ways.
The Ohio governor was stubbornly optimistic throughout the evening and refused to attack his rivals even in the midst of the most heated exchanges. "We have to stop this," Kasich said at one point as the moderators briefly lost control. "Let's start solving problems," he said during an extended pointed exchange on immigration.
Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, stood out briefly during the health care discussion, but seemed to acknowledge his own weak standing after finishing in last in two of the past three primary contests.
"Can somebody attack me please?" he asked at one point. His rivals ignored the request.
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TOO LITTLE TOO LATE?
Even if Thursday's debate performance dents Trump's momentum, it could be too little, too late, to loosen his tightening grasp on the Republican presidential nomination.
Unfortunately for Trump's critics — and there are many in the Republican Party — his main rivals waited until five days before Super Tuesday to attack him so aggressively in a debate.
Trump has a big lead in the early delegate count, and preference polls suggest he's well positioned to add to it next week.
"I've dealt with much tougher," Trump told CNN moments after the debate ended. "I really enjoyed it."
CHICAGO (AP) — Bernie Sanders was in his first year at the University of Chicago, 20 and with a thick New York accent, when he took to the steps of the administration building to rail against a university policy of racially segregated housing.
"We feel it is an intolerable situation, when Negro and white students of the university cannot live together in university-owned apartments," Sanders told a crowd of about 200 students that afternoon in January 1962. Then he and a few dozen students headed to the fifth floor, where they began a 15-day sit-in outside the university president's office, passing their time reading and eating dinners of donated cheese and salami sandwiches.
As Sanders and fellow Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton jockey for support from black and Latino voters ahead of Saturday's South Carolina primary, much of the debate has centered around which candidate has a stronger record of fighting for minorities. The issue could be especially important in South Carolina, where black voters form a majority of the Democratic electorate. In their last primary contest, in Nevada, a large majority of blacks supported Clinton amid questions about Sanders' early commitment to civil rights.
As a U.S. senator from Vermont, which has a tiny black population, Sanders has faced skepticism from black voters about his longstanding involvement in race relations. Earlier in the primary he tangled with Black Lives Matters protesters, who complained at the time that his message of addressing economic inequality would not always serve as an antidote to systemic racism.
But it's clear Sanders was at least a local civil rights leader, taking action on campus and in Chicago neighborhoods at a time when such activities were primarily happening in the South, according to an Associated Press review of contemporaneous news coverage and interviews with former classmates of Sanders.
They recall a student who was serious-minded about politics, if not his studies, and inclined toward long discussions of public policy. He once wrote more than 1,500 words critical of campus rules forbidding students from having sex that filled a full page of the school newspaper.
He became active in the campus chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality after arriving in Chicago in the fall of 1961 and before the academic year ended was voted the group's chairman. In 1963, two weeks before Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on Washington, Sanders was arrested at a demonstration against segregation in Chicago schools.
"As far as whites go, he was in the top 1/1000th of 1 percent of people who acted, took it seriously and were willing to put themselves on the line," said Mike Parker, a former classmate who was arrested with Sanders and about 150 other protesters that day. Parker was released; Sanders and three others — described by prosecutors as having "engineered" the protests — were later fined $25 each, according to a 1964 Chicago Tribune article.
"It was just the beginning of the civil rights movement, and there were very few whites willing to stand up and take a chance, not only to speak of politics but to get arrested for it," added Parker, now 75 and an activist in California. "He was one of the few."
Clinton took the stage in Chicago earlier this month with the mother of Sandra Bland, a black woman found dead in a Texas jail cell. Erica Garner, whose father, Eric Garner, died after police put him in a chokehold, is featured in a pro-Sanders campaign ad and stumped with him in South Carolina.
Sanders' campaign has highlighted his civil rights activism in ads in South Carolina, just as Clinton's campaign has highlighted her own record on the issue. Through Monday, at least one in five of Sanders' television ads there featured a direct reference to his civil rights work or his stances on racial issues, according to data from Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group.
One features Benjamin Jealous, a former NAACP president, comparing Sanders' work with his own parents' activism. Sanders is someone who "came up in the Congress of Racial Equality," Jealous says. Another ad quotes Martin Luther King Jr. and says, "Bernie Sanders. He was there when Doctor King marched on Washington."
Scrutiny of Sanders also has increased.
Civil rights icon John Lewis, backing Clinton, appeared to question Sanders' role, saying recently, "I never saw him." The Georgia congressman later clarified his comments, saying he didn't intend to doubt Sanders' participation.
Another flap involved a photograph from the University of Chicago archive used by the Sanders campaign. The photographer, Danny Lyon, said it showed a young Sanders speaking during the 1962 sit-in. But other former classmates said the lanky guy holding court in the hallway was actually another student. That prompted criticism from some who accused Sanders of exaggerating his involvement.
Even classmates who don't believe Sanders was in the photo, however, said there's no doubt he was helping lead the event and was a fixture on campus. Bruce Stark, who was treasurer of CORE and participated in the sit-in, said his most lasting impression of Sanders was how much older he seemed.
"He never smiled," Stark said. "He was absolutely earnest and absolutely sincere — just the way he comes across on TV."