In this bloggers opinion, the biggest night in film was a
success; albeit a relatively predictable one.
The 86th annual Academy Awards were this past Sunday and
overall the winners were pretty expected.
The night started out with a decent opening monologue by host Ellen
Degeneres who’s later antics proved to be hilariously random breaks in what is
usually a long, overly serious award ceremony.
After ordering pizza for hungry celebs (and collecting money from them
after) Ellen decided to take a spur of the moment “selfie” jam packed with some
of Hollywood’s biggest stars which subsequently broke the record for most
retweets ever and crashed Twitters servers.
But the host was just the background to a night which showcased some of
the best films of not only the past year, but the past several. As expected, the sci-fi powerhouse Gravity swept all the technical awards for
the revolutionary new technologies created specifically for the film, and
nabbed Alfonso Cuaron a well-deserved Best Director win. Amazingly however, lead actress Sandra
Bullock fell short to Cate Blanchett who took home the award for Best Actress
in a Leading Role for her part in the Woody Allen flick Blue Jasmine, its only award of the night. Another surprise was Jared Leto who took home
Best Supporting Actor for his emotionally charged role in Dallas Buyers Club alongside Best Lead Actor winner Matthew
McConaughey. Both had great speeches
which saw Leto giving an emotional tribute to his mother and McConaughey giving
shout outs to God, his father, and his roots ending his speech with his
trademark “All right, all right, all right” from his 90’s breakout film Dazed and Confused. I was thrilled that Best Original Screenplay
went to a deserving Spike Jonze. The director/skater/
frequent Jackass collaborator looked right at home in front of the thousands of
Hollywood starlets as he accepted his award for Her. Not surprisingly, Best
Adapted Screenplay went to 12 Years a
Slave which was based on the journal of Solomon Northrup. Predictably, the film also went on to take
home the most coveted award of the night, Best Picture which saw an overjoyed
cast join producer/actor Brad Pitt and director Steve McQueen on stage to
accept the award. Pitt gave a short and
humble speech before passing the spotlight off to McQueen who capped off a
great night with a wonderful acceptance speech in which he dedicated the film
to all those who have suffered slavery in the past and the 21 million who still
endure it today.
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