Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)
Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)
Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

Jared Leto is the favourite for this one, but I don’t think that’s really fair – Michael Fassbender blows him out of the water here. If the award was for starving yourself, then sure, give it to Leto – but Fassbender’s performance in no small way made 12 Years a Slave what it is. I really hope he gets it, though all the others have earned their nominations too.

I, once again, fail to understand what Alfonso Cuarón is doing up here. If any of the other four win then I’d say they deserve it, but for Cuarón I never believed any of the tension he was trying to create and, as with some other viewers, I did feel genuinely nauseous more than once. Some of the technical work that went on the film is probably worthy of note, but which department exactly? Certainly not directing, neither too those who worked on the robotics to create the appearance of the actors being in space – it never once felt realistic to me.

For the other categories I can’t see anything other than Frozen winning best animated film, although I’m surprised not to see Monsters University in there instead of Despicable Me 2, and maybe even Epic for that matter, and for best film in a foreign language I’m happy to see that not only did Blue is the Warmest Colour not make it in, but that The Hunt did.

Best Motion Picture of the Year

12 Years a Slave

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave

Best Achievement in Directing

Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen

Spike Jonze for Her

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published

John Ridley for 12 Years a Slave

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year

Frozen

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year

The Great Beauty

Best Achievement in Cinematography

Emmanuel Lubezki for Gravity

Best Achievement in Editing

Alfonso Cuarón & Mark Sanger for Gravity

Best Achievement in Production Design

Catherine Martin & Beverley Dunn for The Great Gatsby

Best Achievement in Costume Design

Catherine Martin for The Great Gatsby

Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling

Adruitha Lee & Robin Mathews for Dallas Buyers Club

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score

Steven Price for Gravity

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song

Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez for Frozen‘s ‘Let It Go’

Best Achievement in Sound Mixing

Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead & Chris Munro for Gravity

Best Achievement in Sound Editing

Glenn Freemantle for Gravity

Best Achievement in Visual Effects

Timothy Webber, Chris Lawrence, David Shirk & Neil Corbould for Gravity

Best Documentary, Feature

20 Feet from Stardom

Best Documentary, Short Subject

The Lady In Number 6

Best Short Film, Animated

Mr Hublot

Best Short Film, Live Action

Helium

Honorary Awards

Each year several honorary awards are given out, and since 2009 this has been done at a separate event from the main ceremony called the Governors Awards ceremony. The following people were awarded this time around (despite the different award names, each comes in the form of an Oscar), clips of each follow in the section below :

Honorary Oscars : Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin & Piero Tosi
Gordon E. Sawyer Award : Peter Anderson
Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award : Angelina Jolie

Discussion

Overall a reasonably pleasant show, albeit lacking the strong comedy aspect that the likes of the wonderful Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were able to deliver at the Globes last year, it was remarkably packed full of nerves, fluffed lines and awkward responses to losing out. Ellen DeGeneres did quite a good job with a fairly non-offensive presentation and her successful attempt to create the most retweeted pic ever was a nice idea, giving birth to what is a pretty great photo. During one of the montages of different films there was a noticeably highlighted Mel Gibson giving a rousing battle speech during Braveheart – deliberate choice for Scottish independence referendum year? I expect so. There were a few other Scottish nods in there too, with last year’s best animated film winner Brave, Gerard Butler as Leonidas in 300, a couple of Bond moments, though these were admittedly much less conspicuous.

I hate seeing people nervous onstage, I always feel sorry for them, although I think when the most famous actors in the world suffer from it and make mistakes it does allow everyone else to feel a little better about themselves. Worst offender of the night was of course John Travolta’s infamous gaff when introducing Idina Menzel, who gave a wonderful performance of her song ‘Let it Go’ from Frozen, and I would hazard a guess that he just run out of breath and panicked slightly, so in the end her name bizarrely came out as ‘Adele Dahzim’. In fact, you can click here to have your very own name ‘Travoltified’.

Amusing to see the camera instantly cut to U2 in the audience when Jim Carrey made a joke about LSD, and equally nice to see the crowd give them such a warm reception when they sang their nominated song ‘Ordinary Love’. The director of the ceremony and the cameramen must have a lot of fun trying to catch interesting reactions throughout the night, like cutting to a somewhat unhappy looking Michael Fassbender and Barkhad Abdi just after Jared Leto’s victory for best supporting actor, and Sandra Bullock looking increasingly red faced and tearful when Cate Blanchett pipped her to the post for best actress, perhaps augmented by the Oscars placing her right in the middle of the front row. It’s difficult not to feel a little sorry for her, although to be fair she already has one and, really, if you deserved a nomination for best actress of the year you should at least be able to pull off gracious when you don’t win. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her look better though, and the way her hair was styled looked perfect for the occasion.

I think Gravity’s Emmanuel Lubezki’s win for best cinematography was good to see, he almost certainly deserved it for his work on the film and he has also done some terrific work over the years on films like The Tree of Life and The New World as well as on Cuaron’s previous films. The simmering feud between 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley was there to see – apparently Ridley refused to let McQueen share credit for the screenplay, which is really unfortunate given it’s such a successful film but it’s also impossible for anyone else to judge on the merits of the case, filmmaking is such a collaborative experience that such conflicts are sadly far from uncommon, thankfully there was no public fallout and maybe they’ll continue to work together in the future.

Possibly the oddest moment of the evening came once again from Jennifer Lawrence, who paused as she was about to announce the best actor nominees in order to chastise someone off to the side for laughing at her, but of course the audience had no idea who it was. Unfortunately, she was genuinely pissed off, although she tried to recover from it quickly, whether it was because she was secretly upset at losing out to Nyong’o for best supporting actress, or that she’d been highlighted by the host for also tripping up this year, this time on the red carpet, but whatever the reason it wasn’t exactly the most dignified thing to do in front of millions. As it turns out, the guilty party in the audience was Jared Leto who was simply laughing along with DeGeneres who, unbeknown to Lawrence, was making fun of her behind her back, no doubt referencing last year’s infamous trip once again. To compound the faux pas, Lawrence can be seen in the background of McConaughey’s best actor speech, still onstage, talking to someone else and not paying attention.

One of the saddest moment in the evening, asides from the obituary section, was when two of Hollywood’s legends appeared onstage to give presentations but both had noticeable difficulty – namely Sidney Poitier, presumably struggling through natural difficulties given his age, and Kim Novak, who clearly found it difficult to talk after having plastic surgery work done on her face, a bit horrific to watch given her timeless onscreen beauty – don’t do it people, ever, even shrinking with age into a hunchback is preferable to looking like an unnatural plastic, animated mannequin.

No one was hurried by music this time, which is nice – in fact at one point the conductor even halted the music briefly when one of the Oscar recipients thought of something else to say, and then thought better of it. Cate Blanchett’s mention of ‘Julia Roberts, hashtag Suck It’ was apparently a reference to something that happened at the bar but otherwise remains a mystery, and The Red Dragon also liked Jamie Foxx’s rendition of the theme tune to ‘Chariots of Fire’, partly because his own father was in the movie ….

Ceremony Clips

Announcement of the Nominations

Best Supporting Actor
Honorary Awards
Foreign Film
Supporting Actress
Director
Actress
Actor
Film

Announcement of the Nominations

 

Best Supporting Actor

Honorary Awards ;

Honorary Oscars : Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin & Piero Tosi
Gordon E. Sawyer Award : Peter Anderson
Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award : Angelina Jolie

Lansbury

Steve Martin

Piero Tosi

Peter Anderson

Angelina Jolie

Best Foreign Film

Best Supporting Actress

Best Director

Best Actress

Best Actor

Best Film