If you thought the awards season was over with the Grammy’s, you thought wrong. The Oscars, hosted by Seth MacFarlane, came around again to honor all the great movies we’ve spent our money on in the past year. The glamour, the outfits and seeing our favorite stars win (or lose) got packed into the 85th Academy Awards of 2013.
Seth MacFarlane opened in the typical fashion of hosts by making some crude jokes at the expense of Chris Brown, Rihanna, Nicolas Cage, Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence just to name a few. MacFarlane followed with not one, not two, but three performances with a choir of all gay men (yes, you read that correctly) and Daniel Radcliffe alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt. What a beautiful combination.
Octavia Spencer, who won an Oscar herself at last year’s Academy Awards, presented the first Oscar award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, received by Christoph Waltz for the movie “Django Unchained.”
Paul Rudd and Melissa McCarthy put their humor to good use when presenting the award for Best Animated Film which was given, rightfully so, to the beautiful Disney Pixar film “Brave.”
To introduce the Best Picture nominees, Reese Witherspoon came out and briefly spoke of the first three nominees. Next, the handsome male cast of “The Avengers” took the stage to present the nominees for Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. Both were awarded to “Life of Pi.”
Channing Tatum and Jennifer Aniston presented the award for Best Costume Design. The award was given to Jacqueline Durran who designed for the movie “Anna Karenina.” “Les Misérables” took home their first award in the similar category Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Seth MacFarlane kindly, and without any jokes at all, introduced Halle Berry as “one of the most beautiful women in the world,” who then took the stage to recount the iconic music of the James Bond movies in the past five decades. In addition to the tribute, Dame Shirley Bassey belted out a fierce performance of her song “Goldfinger” in a classic golden dress.
In between the few dry Oscar categories, including documentaries and short films, Liam Neeson from the successful “Taken” movies came out to list the next batch of films nominated for Best Picture.
“This is like church, only with more people praying,” says Seth MacFarlane before bringing out Jennifer Garner and Jessica Chastain to present the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. The winner, “Amour,” is the second foreign film from Austria to receive this Oscar.
The entire cast of “Les Misérables” came together to perform a piece from their film, stealing the spotlight from Jennifer Hudson and Catherine Zeta-Jones who had performed songs from their previous movies, “Dream Girls” and “Chicago” earlier in the show.
Ted, the talking bear, took the stage with Mark Wahlberg to give an award to “Les Misérables” for winning in the category Best Sound Mixing, which the film definitely deserved. The next award for the category Best Sound Editing was shockingly tied between the movies “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Skyfall.”
Best Actress in a Supporting Role was presented by Christopher Plummer, who coyly said, “I look forward to the honor of working with any of these ladies in one of my next 30 films.” No surprise, Anne Hathaway took home that Oscar for her stunning role in “Les Misérables.”
Jennifer Lawrence came out to present Adele’s performance of “Skyfall,” which she later won an Oscar for. In sparkling black, Adele flawlessly sings without shouting her lyrics as Seth MacFarlane might have had everyone prepared for with his earlier jokes.
Bringing together the two biggest book-to-movie series, Daniel Radcliffe and a limping, somewhat comedic-dry Kristen Stewart came out to present together, giving the Oscar for Best Production Design to the film “Lincoln.”
Finally, the night closed with Best Actress awarded to Jennifer Lawrence for “Silver Linings Playbook,” and Best Actor was awarded to Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln.” He is now the first actor to win three Oscars in this category.
The final Oscar was supposed to be presented by Jack Nicholson, but during his speech, he introduced the true presenter, Michelle Obama. “Argo,” was awarded the Academy Award for Best Picture. The movie was not in the front-running for the award, but it was well-deserved by the film based on the true events of Tony Mendez.