Oscars 2014

So the Academy Awards have come and gone - no big surprises there!

Enjoyed the proceedings, so let's role through them:

1. Ellen Degeneres did a great job. Now my favourite presenters are Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg, but Ellen kept the pace light and in forward motion - ordering pizza for the guests (and distributing them among the stars - I wonder if poor very pregnant Kerry Washington got her slice, the poor pizza dude looked pretty damn terrified), and then Ellen broke twitter, by posting a selfie which was then photo-bombed en-masse by a troop of celebs, twittering it and breaking the retweet record (crashing the twitter servers in the process, and shattering the previous record held by a picture of the Obama's embracing), it was a great moment, and the tweet has now been retweeted some 2.6 Million times, in less than a day.
2. The award handouts were pretty standard, those expected to win the big awards won, perhaps Spike Jonze winning for Best Original Screenplay over Gravity, and the fact that the hard-hitting 12 Years a Slave went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture were the unexpecteds (although the possibility was always there). Team Dallas Buyers Club won their awards as expected (Jared Leto for Best Supporting Actor, taking the moment to honour his mother and the world in crisis, Matthew McConaughey is Best Actor- Alright, Alright, Alright...), Lupita Nyong'o graciously being a lady in accepting her Best Supporting Actress trophy, Cate Blanchett being the absolute obvious pre-destined Oscar winner for her work in Blue Jasmine and Alfonso Cuaron winning Best Director (for my personal Best Picture pic, Gravity.
3.  Some great performances of the Oscar nominated songs - Pharell Williams performing Happy from Despicable Me 2 and U2 paying Madiba a respect singing the song Ordinary Love from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
4. The In Memoriam section was done well segueing into Bette Midler with Wind Beneath My Wings - a great Oscars moment - last year we were treated to Shirley Bassey, this year Bette. This is always a stand-out moment, honouring faces we know and that are now gone, as I get older I recognise more, sobering stuff.

That's it in a nutshell: Oscars done been done - til next year!

nuff said...