"During the ceremony, AMPAS presented the Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars)"
"took place on March 24, 1997, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles beginning" – de-link LA as MoS suggests.
Besides writing the number of awards by The English Patient at the ceremony, you should also add that it won the most awards.
"Best Original Musical or Comedy Score winner Rachel Portman became the first female winner for composing a musical score" – can be rephrased as "Rachel Portman became the first female to win the Best Original Musical or Comedy Score".
"Winners are listed first and highlighted with boldface, and indicated with a double dagger ‡"
The tables besides the one in the Winners and nominees section need to meet MOS:DTT. !scope=row is what I am referring to.
"comedian Billy Crystal to host the 1997 telecast stating," – a comma is needed before "telecast".
Why the inconsistency of wiki-linking the publisher of a source-the one in ref 5.
Rephrasing the sentence as "Rachel Portman became the first female to win the Best Original Musical or Comedy Score" would imply that she was the first person to win Best original Musical or Comedy Score only. In other words, a woman would have already won dramatic score (which is false). Portman was the first winner for original score regardless of dramatic or comedic/musical score.
Putting a comma before telecast (1997, telecast) does not seem grammatically correct.