In case anyone missed it, Sunday night saw tinsel town’s annual back-slapping hugathon, The 86th Annual Academy Awards, taking place down at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Ellen DeGeneres proved a safe and likeable pair of hands in the driving seat, delivering a series of well-judged gags that will helped us forget Seth McFarlane’s underwhelming stint in the role last year. 
The biggest surprise of the night is that there was no real surprises: As expected Steve McQueen’s very worthy 12 Years a Slave took the top prize, beating out competition from American Hustle; while Gravity cleaned up, mostly in the technical categories, taking away 7 awards including a very deserved Best Director gong for the wonderful Alfonso Cauron, adding to his already impressive clean sweep from the Globes, Baftas and Directors Guild.
In the least surprising news ever, Cate Blanchett walked away with the statue for best actress, giving a warm, witty and graceful acceptance speech for her role in Woody Allens top notch Blue Jasmine, which lost out on the Best Original Screenplay Oscar to Spike Jonze’s delightful Her. The Adapted Screenplay award, meanwhile, was awarded to John Ridleys work on 12 Years A Slave. 
Elsewhere in the acting categories, Tom Hanks won for Captain Philips Mathew McConaughey scooped the award for Best Actor in a Leading role for his sterling work as AIDs sufferer Ron Woodruff, the he-hunk done good giving a characteristically bizarre speech that delighted and confused (mostly confused) the assembled stars.
The Supporting Actor awards went to Jared Leto and His Hair, while Lupita Nyong’o deservedly walked away with Actress gong for her performance in 12 Years A Slave, and in the process delivered the best acceptance speech of the night “When I look down at the statue, may it remind me and every little child that no matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid”, very lovely indeed.
As was expected, the technical awards were dominated by Gravity which walked away with little
gold fellas for Best Visual Effects (duh), Cinematography, Editing, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Best original score for Brit Steven Price’s atmospheric nerve jangling soundscape. Not a bad haul.
Best Animated feature, again predictably, went to Disneys Frozen, which also won Best Song for Let it Go, frankly steeling the award away from Pharell’s “Happy” from Despicable Me 2.
For fans of lists, the complete run down of winners can be found below:
BEST PICTURE – 12 Years A Slave
DIRECTOR – Alfonso Cuarón – Gravity
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – Spike Jonze – Her
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – John Ridley – 12 Years A Slave
ACTOR – Matthew McConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club
ACTRESS – Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine
SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave
SUPPORTING ACTOR – Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club
CINEMATOGRAPHY – Gravity – Emmanuel Lubezki
EDITING – Gravity – Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger
COSTUME DESIGN – The Great Gatsby – Catherine Martin
MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING – Dallas Buyers Club – Adruitha Lee, Robin Mathews
ANIMATED SHORT FILM – Mr. Hublot
ANIMATED FILM – Frozen
ORIGINAL SCORE – Gravity – Steven Price
ORIGINAL SONG – ‘Let It Go’ – Frozen
PRODUCTION DESIGN – The Great Gatsby – Catherine Martin, Beverley Dunn
SOUND EDITING – Gravity – Glenn Freemantle
SOUND MIXING – Gravity – Skip Lievsay, Christopher Benstead, Niv Adiri, Chris Munro
VISUAL EFFECTS – Gravity – Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, David Shirk, Neil Corbould, Nikki Penny
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM – The Great Beauty – Italy
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – 20 Feet From Stardom
DOCUMENTARY SHORT – The Lady In Number 6: Music Saved My Life
LIVE ACTION SHORT – Helium