2014 Academy Awards

This is the 86th Annual Academy Awards, this year there are some good movies, including some that will make you say “I would love to see that again.”

Ezgi Gulec

The 86th Academy Awards were seen by 43 million Americans on Sunday, March 2nd. The three and a half hour show was hosted by Ellen DeGeneres who made the audience laugh all through the night. Not to mention, her celebrity selfie including stars such as Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, and Jennifer Lawrence broke a Twitter record of 100,000 retweets within five minutes, and over 2.8 million by Monday.

The biggest film of the night, “Gravity” won seven awards, including best director for Alfonso Cuaron, best original score, and best sound editing for Glenn Freemantle. Skip Lievsay,  Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead and Chris Munro took best sound mixing, followed by Tim Webber for best visual effects.

Best film editing went out to Alfonso Cuarón and Mark Sanger. This is the first win for Cuarón, whose six career nominations include director and best picture for the space drama, and for first-time nominee Sanger. Emmanuel Lubezki won his first Oscar for cinematography after being nominated five times perviously for films such as “The Tree of Life” and “A Little Princess”.

The slavery drama “12 Years a Slave” won the Academy Award for best picture, making history as the first movie from a black director (Steve McQueen) to win the film industry’s highest honor in 86 years of the Oscars. The second biggest film of the night, also took home the award for best adopted screenplay written by John Ridley.

Best original screenplay went to “Her” written by Spike Jonze. “We made a movie about relationships and intimacy,and that’s what we we share together,” Jonze said of his collaborators.

Cate Blanchett was blown away by her win for best actress in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” while Matthew McConaughey took best actor for true-life AIDS activist drama “Dallas Buyers Club”. Both Blanchett and McConaughey took home their first Oscar.

Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club” won best supporting actor followed by Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave” who took best supporting actress. The crowd gave Nyong’o a standing ovation as she accepted her award. She delivered a moving speech that honored those involved with making  “12 Years a Slave” and the spirit of Patsey, the real-life woman she played in the film.

“The Great Gatsby’s” Catherine Martin has her third Oscar win, this time for costume design on the film that her husband, Baz Luhrmann, directed. Best production design also went out to “The Great Gatsby” for the six-time nominee Catherine Martin.

“Dallas Buyers Club” won the Oscar for makeup and hairstyling. The award went out to the first-time nominees Robin Mathews and Adruitha Lee.

The Oscar for best animated short film was awarded to “Mr. Hublot” directed by Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares .”Mr. Hublot” beat out four other animated shorts for the Oscar win, including the Mickey Mouse-starring “Get a Horse!” that played before the Disney’s box-office giant “Frozen.”

“Frozen” won the Oscar for best animated feature which was a first ever win for Disney. “Frozen” was also nominated in the original song category for the tune, “Let It Go” and took the award home.

“The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life” directed by Alice Herz-Sommer won best documentary short, and  “20 Feet from Stardom” directed by Morgan Neville, Gil Friesen, and Caitrin Rogers took home the Oscar for best documentary feature.

Finally, Anders Walter, the director of “Helium” won the Oscar for Best live-action short film, followed by Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty” for best foreign feature.