Anniversary show goes on

LOS ANGELES -- The musical "Chicago" won the best-picture Academy Award on Sunday at an Oscar show overshadowed by the U.S.-led war on Iraq.\n"Chicago," which had a leading 13 nominations, was shaping up as the big winner numerically, taking the supporting-actress prize for Catherine Zeta-Jones and four technical awards. Chris Cooper won supporting actor for "Adaptation."\nAdrien Brody was a surprise best actor winner for his role as a Holocaust survivor in "The Pianist," which also netted Roman Polanski the best-director Oscar. Nicole Kidman was named best actress for portraying novelist Virginia Woolf in the somber drama "The Hours."\nPedro Almodovar won the original screenplay Oscar for "Talk to Her," and Ronald Harwood the adapted screenplay award for "The Pianist."\nWorld events sparked several emotional highlights, including Brody's tearful speech and an attack on President Bush by filmmaker Michael Moore, winner of the best-documentary Oscar for "Bowling for Columbine."\nBrody played the title character in "The Pianist," based on the real-life story of musician Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who lived through World War II by hiding from the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto. "The Pianist" was directed by Polanski, a Holocaust survivor himself.\nThe only best-actor nominee who did not already have at least one Oscar, Brody won with his first nomination. Over a 15-year career, Brody has focused on provocative films over commercial ones, among them "The Thin Red Line" and "Summer of Sam."\nThe 6-foot-1, 160-pound Brody lost 30 pounds in six weeks to capture Szpilman's gauntness after years of deprivation in the Warsaw ghetto.\n"This film would not be possible without the blueprint provided by Wladyslaw Szpilman," Brody said. "This film is a tribute to his survival."\nZeta-Jones was the first performer to win an acting Oscar for a musical since Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey for 1972's "Cabaret." In "Chicago," Zeta-Jones played a jailed vaudeville scamp scheming for celebrity after slaying her husband and sister. Documentary winner "Bowling for Columbine" is Moore's alternately hilarious and horrifying examination of gun violence in America.\nBy the show's halfway mark, ABC News twice offered a brief war update, then switched back to the Oscars.\nEarlier, demonstrators on both sides of the war issue gathered near the Kodak Theatre, site of the Oscars.\nHalf a block from the area where stars arrived, supporters of U.S. troops in Iraq chanted "USA, USA," and held a banner reading "God Bless America."\nPlanners scrapped the glitzy red-carpet arrival festivities. And some celebrities opposed to the war wore peace pins. \nA few stars and filmmakers backed out of the 75th annual Oscars, either in protest of the war or because they felt uncomfortable making merry when people were dying in Iraq.