Academy Awards Recap

The dust has settled on this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, and the mystery of who would take home Best Picture has been solved. In one of the tightest races in recent memory, 12 Years a Slave came out on top, beating Gravity and American Hustle for the night’s biggest honour. Gravity won the largest number of statues (7 wins from 10 nominations), while the team behind American Hustle came away disappointed.

Click here to see the full list of winners.

This year’s ceremony was hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, marking a change in tone from last year’s presentation hosted by Seth McFarlane. The comedienne’s opening monologue was filled with a range of jokes aimed at everyone from Meryl Streep to Somali actor Barkhad Abdi. While it wasn’t a Ricky Gervais-esque jab fest, she wasn’t too soft either, pushing the envelope more than we are used to seeing on her daytime talk show.

Outside of the Best Picture race, most categories had a clear cut frontrunner. As expected, Gravity handily swept its technical nominations, Frozen took its two categories (Animated Picture and Original Song), and the favourites in the acting categories all won their awards: Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club) and Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) for their leading roles; Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) and Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) for their supporting roles. Their speeches were all gracious, but McConaughey’s stood out for being entertaining, a little irreverent, and overall very heartfelt. Cate Blanchett gave a small nod to her director Woody Allen, under fire amid allegations of abusing his adopted daughter. Another stand out speech came from Let It Go songwriting couple Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who rhymed their thank you’s before finishing with a touching note about how their daughters were the inspiration behind the song. Overall, no one speech stood out as being particularly awful, which is both refreshing and disappointing at the same time.

The biggest surprise of the night was likely the complete shut-out of American Hustle. Going into the ceremony, the David O. Russell drama was tied with Gravity with 10 nominations including one in each acting category, a feat he achieved last year with Silver Linings Playbook. American Hustle joins a small group of films with 10+ nomination and no wins. Gangs of New York and 2010’s True Grit also went 0-for-10, but the record is still held by The Turning Point and The Color Purple, both going winless after getting 11 nominations. Captain Phillips (6 nominations), Nebraska (6 nominations), The Wolf of Wall Street (5 nominations) and Philomena (4 nominations) were also shut out.

The 86th Academy Awards ceremony won’t stand out as being the most memorable, but it also wasn’t a complete bust (we’re looking at you James and Anne). TV ratings for this year’s telecast were up for the third straight year, and the show was the most watched entertainment presentation of the last 10 years. If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was looking to stay the course and not rock the boat, then this year will be considered a success.

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