Academy Awards

Shakespeare in Love may have won the best picture award. Steven Spielberg may have won for best director. But it was Roberto Benigni who enlivened Sunday night_s Academy Awards (R) presentations, standing in triumph atop the seat backs at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles when his film, Life is Beautiful, won for best foreign-language film. Benigni launched into a rambling, virtually incomprehensible, yet utterly charming, acceptance speech when he was named best actor -- the first man ever to receive that award for a foreign-language film. He thanked the Oscar(R) crowd for their "hailstorm of kindness of gratitude" and his parents for giving him the greatest gift of all -- "poverty…