Oscars 2014

The first winner of the evening was Jared Leto, who won Best Supporting Actor (as was widely expected) for Dallas Buyers Club and gave a really long speech in which he mentioned Ukraine, his band, and a whole lot of other things. But Lupita Nyong'o, who has been making her way around Hollywood being unerringly delightful for this entire awards season — and, it must be said, looking like a million dollars everywhere she goes — gave an absolutely lovely speech accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years A Slave. Cate Blanchett's acceptance for Best Actress in Blue Jasmine spared some time to chastise Hollywood at large for treating movies about women as niche pictures, while Matthew McConaughey, in accepting for Dallas Buyers Club, seemed to put his emphasis on his admiration of (1) God and (2) himself. As for other Best Picture nominees, Gravity took nothing in the acting categories, and its screenplay wasn't nominated, but it won a boatload of recognition for its sound, score and visuals, awards for its editing and cinematography, and one very big one: Best Director, for Alfonso Cuaron – apparently the first Latino director to win. In addition to Best Picture, 12 Years won an Adapted Screenplay award for John Ridley. The Best Original Screenplay went to Spike Jonze's Her, which didn't get the nomination for Joaquin Phoenix that many would have liked to see. The biggest disappointments may have been in the American Hustle camp, which went into the evening with ten nominations and walked out with no awards.
It was a long night.