Oscars flashback: When a 'Pimp' brought down the house

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Flashy moments at the Academy Awards tend to go to “topliners” — actors, directors, writers and best picture.But that doesn’t mean the other categories can’t shine bright.

And during the 78th Oscars, held at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on March 5, 2006, that’s exactly what happened.Here’s what unspooled in the animated feature, song, makeup, costume, foreign-language film (now called international feature film) and live-action short film categories 20 years ago.“Tsotsi,” director Gavin Hood’s film about a young troublemaker who carjacks a vehicle only to find a baby inside, racked up South Africa’s first-ever Oscar win in the international feature category.

It was the country’s second nomination, and the first African film not made in French to win.Hood accepted the award from Will Smith and spoke briefly in Zulu before shifting to English: “God bless Africa.” He singled out stars Presley Chweneyagae and Terry Pheto, then added, “We may have foreign-language films, but our stories are the same as your stories.They’re about the human heart and emotion.”“Tsotsi” was up against Italy’s “The Beast in the Heart,” France’s “Joyeux Noël,” Palestine’s “Paradise Now,” and Germany’s “Sophie Scholl – The Final Days.”Nick Park, who had three Oscars prior to this evening, picked up his fourth (with first-time winner Steve Box) for animated feature with the stop-motion film about monstrous lapins, “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” — and the bow-tie-wearing director even brought bow-ties for the statuettes he and Box held.They pointed out Peter Sallis, who at the time had voiced Wallace in the “Wallace & Gromit” films for 23 years, after accepting the statuettes from Reese Witherspoon.

And together they honored another kind of star from the “Wallace” films, chiming together, “Cracking ...