This week, hundreds of celebrities gathered together for the 87th annual Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars.
The Academy awarded many films across a breadth of categories, but the awards ceremony celebrates more than just the winners and the nominees; it celebrates the movie industry as a whole, and some actors find that quite humbling.
This year’s ceremony had a lot to live up to after last year when host Ellen Degeneres bought pizza for the entire audience and broke Twitter with the infamous selfie. A few of the stars in the background were Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt to name a few. Degeneres has said in interviews that she will most likely not host the Oscars again, but she has said that before.
This year’s host, Neil Patrick Harris, was not new to the award show hosting game, but he still had high expectations. Though he didn’t order pizza or break a social media network, Harris definitely brought his A-game.
Harris is known for his “opening number” at the Tony Awards and he brought that to the Academy. The song “Moving Pictures” featured Anna Kendrick and Jack Black, who both added their own humorous twists. Harris’ humorous stabs at other celebrities helped keep the energy up through the slower parts of the ceremony.
One of the running jokes of the night dealt with his “predictions” for the ceremony, which he had stored away and locked up. Octavia Spencer, who played Minnie Jackson in the 2011 film “The Help,” was put on guard duty to make sure the seal was not tampered with.
Considering that Harris’ character Barney from “How I Met Your Mother” was a magician, maybe there was some trick to it, but regardless, the predictions were quite hilarious.
A more memorable moment, however, was when NPH’s robe got caught in his dressing room door. He didn’t have time to change, so he presented in his tighty-whities.
Only a few moments of the night beat this one for most memorable.
Hip-hop artist Common and John Legend’s performance of “Glory” from the movie “Selma” received the first standing ovation of the night. It was well-deserved. The powerful song with a full chorus backing up Legend and Common would strike a chord with people watching at home as well as in the seats of Dolby Theatre.
The only performance that surpassed this as the most memorable moment: Lady Gaga performing a medley of songs from “The Sound of Music,” in honor of the 50th anniversary of the film’s release. Many people in the audience had not heard Gaga’s musical theater-trained voice and were in shock and awe.
This moment was probably the closest the Oscars came to breaking any social media platform.
The only bothersome thing came from the stream of comments saying, “Gaga should stick to that kind of music.” Lady Gaga, and any other musician for that matter, has the freedom to create any type of music they want, whether it be songs about bad romances or show tunes.
One joke deserves an honorable mention, simply for its continuity from last year’s Oscars. In 2014, John Travolta mispronounced Idina Menzel’s name – Adele Dazeem. This year, NPH mentioned Benedict Cumberbatch, a great actor and his interpretation of how Travolta would pronounce Ben Affleck.
He then introduced Menzel, who came out just moments before John Travolta, who apologized for the mistake and then began to awkwardly cradle her face in his hands.
Maybe NPH is right and next year, he’ll apologize for all of the face touching.
However, the main reason that these celebrities got together was to recognize great film-making.
Many deserving movies won and everyone who helped to create the movies – from directors to actors to scene designers to costumers – received due recognition.
There are way too many to recap right now; however, some of the most deserving as well as the ones who were forgotten are worth noting.
First of all, it’s absolutely intolerable that “The Lego Movie” was not even nominated for Best Animated Feature. Even if it didn’t win in the category – which it should have – it at least deserved recognition for the attention to detail in the animation of the Legos into the Lego world, as well as the characters.
NPH also poked at this by introducing the award telling whoever was sitting next to the movie’s animators to distract them.
Also, not that “Grand Budapest Hotel” didn’t deserve several awards that night, but “Into The Woods” should have taken the Oscar for Best Production Design.
That entire world was basically created out of nothing, not to mention all the “magic” done by Meryl Streep’s witch.
Then again, what are giants, the inside of a wolf and magic compared to a hotel?
I thought “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” or “Guardians of the Galaxy” would have won the Oscar for Visual Effects, but awarding “Interstellar” is also acceptable.
Since I had yet to see “Selma,” I thought for sure that “Everything is Awesome” from “The Lego Movie” would have won for Original Song, but then I saw the performance of “Glory” and knew hands-down that song would take it.
However, upon seeing the movie, I feel that it deserved more than just one award for one song.
Finally, I know the choice was probably insanely difficult, but Eddie Redmayne definitely deserved the Oscar for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.”
Even though a couple of points in the show were a bit problematic, the Oscars went over well, went over by 15 minutes and made audiences at home and in person laugh and cry.
I cannot speak for the Academy and I know it must be difficult to choose a winner from a ton of fantastic movies, but it feels like though many great people were recognized, some were forgotten.
A complete list of the winners can be found online at Oscars.go.com.
KHADIJA DJELLOULI
