Well that’s it for another year. The awards have been awarded, the red carpet rolled away, the parties are over and the annual circus that is film award season reached its climax last night with the 87th Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Everything, it seems, went to plan – host, Neil Patrick Harris, put on a suitably charismatic opening performance to get the show under way whilst Lady Gaga looked, well as Lady Gaga always looks – individual. There were the usual sartorial hits – Jennifer Aniston looked stunning in gold Versace – a few, like Rosamund Pike’s scarlet Givenchy column, missed the mark, whilst man-of-the-moment Eddie Redmayne looked relaxed in his trademark alternative take on the traditional tuxedo in a blue number by Alexander McQueen.
All said and done though it was the awards themselves which everyone was really there for. The results on the night turned out to be more or less as had been predicted in the run up to the event – at least where the top gongs were concerned. Redmayne took Best Actor for his part in The Theory of Everything, whilst Julianne Moore took Best Actress for her role in Still Alice. Supporting Actor and Actress awards went to J. K. Simmons for Whiplash and Patricia Arquette for Boyhood respectively, whilst the award for Best Adapted Screenplay went to Graham Moore for The Imitation Game. Perhaps the most unexpected (or expected depending on your point-of-view) winner of the evening however was quirky drama Birdman, which swept up the two top awards of Best Film and Best Director for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, as well as Best Original Screenplay for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr. and Armando Bo.
And to crown the evening? Well, in the year that the timeless classic The Sound of Music celebrates its 50th anniversary it seemed only right that its star Julie Andrews should put in an appearance, which brought the audience to its feet – and there’s few people could claim to be able to do that after over half a century in the business.
