The gongs may have been decided but we’ve a few choice awards of our own to hand out after last night
Rudest Interruption
This year’s biggest innovation – playing the Jaws theme over winners who have outstayed their welcome on stage – was a little rough on The Life of Pi visual effects team, who were hastened swiftly off the stage to facilitate an utterly pointless tribute to “Fifty Years of James Bond”.
Best Musical Number
From the creator of Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane, comes We Saw Your Boobs, the toe-tapping tribute to topless Academy Award nominees through the ages – among them Meryl Streep, Helen Hunt and Anne Hathaway – that launched a million angry tweets. Good job.
Weirdest Presenter
They say politics has turned into show-business, but apparently it’s a two-way street. One minute we’re watching Jack Nicholson getting excited about ringlets, the next, he hands over to Michelle Obama to open the envelope for the Best Film award. Huh? Did I miss her in Silver Linings Playbook?
Flattest Jokes
With MacFarlane drafted in as an “edgy” new presenter, we learned it’s okay to make jokes about the Kardashians in Hollywood, but it’s too soon to riff on Chris Brown and Rhianna, Denzel Washington or Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
Least Practical Frock
Jennifer Lawrence’s Dior princess gown must have looked lovely on the hanger, but the three circus tents used to make her voluminous tail meant she had as much chance of making it up the podium steps as a Dalek. And so it proved. Not perhaps how she imagined she’d look collecting her Academy Award for Best Actress.
Best Tears
Adele blubbed for Best Song and Ben Affleck welled up for Best Film with a thinly veiled reference to the Bennifer years: “It doesn’t matter if you get knocked down. All that matters is that you get up.” Those were hard times for all of us.
Worst Tears
Having won every award in the Supporting Actress category this season, Anne Hathaway worked hard to look emotional as she collected her inevitable Oscar. Sadly, she couldn’t pull it off on the night. Maybe that’s why she’s a contender in the supporting category.
Best Speech
Daniel Day-Lewis had fun collecting his equally inevitable Oscar for Lincoln. His joke that he was originally down to play Margaret Thatcher went over well with Meryl Streep, who handed him the statuette, and almost everybody in the auditorium.
Best Relative
Did you see Seth MacFarlane’s kilt-wearing dad on the red carpet? No one could claim he was unlike Family Guy’s Peter Griffin.
Most Shameless Self-Promotion
Craig Zadan and Neil Meron produced the movie Chicago 10 years before presiding over the 2013 Academy Awards show. Hence the ceremony was padded out with an extended tribute to Hollywood musicals of the past decade – hardly a golden age – including, you’ve guessed it, Chicago. Later in the show the principal cast of the “groundbreaking musical Chicago” presented two awards.
Biggest Oscar What-If?
If Ben Affleck had received a nod in the Best Directing category there would have been no talk of an Oscar snub and no kneejerk impulse to keep giving all known awards to Argo. Thus Ang Lee, for the second time, has taken home the Best Director statuette but not the Best Film gong.
Best Hair
Forget you, Jennifer Aniston. The evening’s most cascading locks belonged to the amazing Chilean cinematographer Claudio Miranda, who brought his impressive mane to the podium to collect an Academy Award for his work on the Life of Pi.
Best Mini-Me
Philip Seymour Hoffman and his young son. Human cloning may already be a reality.
