The Academy Awards are over for another year, and it was a somewhat less predictable, more feisty show than we're used to, with winners making political statements and striking back against the widely-dreaded 'get off the stage' music.
But there was plenty of groan-worthy moments to get worked up about alongside the fun, and for those of you who are mentally stable enough not to have watched the entire thing live, we've picked out 13 of the night's highs and lows.
1. Pawel Pawlikowski defeats the play-off orchestra - BEST
If you apply traditional rules of narrative to the Oscars, the protagonists and antagonists are pretty clear. Our plucky heroes are the bright-eyed, breathless winners, and the villain of the piece is without question that malevolent orchestra that's always cutting their speeches short. In 2013, they even played the Jaws music, just in case you needed further proof.
But Ida director Pawel Pawlikowski was having none of it when he picked up the Best Foreign Language Film award. Like the boss that he is, Pawlikowski kept talking right through the increasingly strident music, making a bold and heartwarming speech that actually silenced it. It turns out that emotional honesty is the kryptonite by which one can defeat the orchestra of doom.
2. Neil Patrick Harris's audience-bothering - WORST
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Here's the thing -Â we know Neil Patrick Harris is better than this. We've seen him be better than this, lending support to the theory that the Oscars gig is simply a poisoned chalice along the lines of Hogwarts' Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching post.
For much of the ceremony Harris was simply trying to stay afloat amidst painfully lacklustre material, which often had him simply wandering the audience in search of a punch line. The gag about seat fillers seemed to go on forever, although Steve Carell's game nobody act just about saved it. Still, a lot of the audience business felt like a pale imitation of Ellen's selfie and pizza action from last year.
3. Benedict Cumberbatch being drunk and bitter - BEST
Dear Oscars: thank you for bringing this GIF into our lives. http://t.co/mJJRlLbV6k pic.twitter.com/HZTcOWbz8W
â€" E! Online (@eonline) February 23, 2015
Not really! Cumberbatch was drunk and bitter in the same way Naomi Watts was disgusted by Seth MacFarlane's opening song in 2013 - that is, in the playing-along-with-a-gag way.
"No-one's drunk and bitter yet 'cause no-one has lost," Harris sang happily, just as we cut to Best Actor nominee Cumberbatch hitting the flask. An early highlight.
4. Terrence Howard chews the scenery - WORST
We're not entirely clear what happened here. Terrence Howard came on stage ostensibly to present one of the Best Picture trio montages. What he actually did was disintegrate instantaneously into a surreal, semi-coherent puddle.
Maybe there was a teleprompter issue. Maybe there was a chemical issue. All we know for sure is that Howard was going through something fairly profound as he spoke about the artistry of The Imitation Game, which seemed to have reduced him to tears. If he'd just have waited a few more minutes until after 'Glory', we'd have bought it.
5. Patricia Arquette's feminist speech - BEST
This shaped up to be one of the more political Oscars ceremonies in recent years, and one of the best charged moments came early on with Arquette's speech, which she dedicated to "the women who gave birth to every citizen and taxpayer of this nation".
"We have fought for everybody else's equal rights. It's our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America," Arquette said.
It's a statement with implications that go way beyond the film industry, and a rare, pleasing acknowledgement of the real world at a celebration that usually epitomises Hollywood tunnel vision. We were right there with Meryl Streep in her ecstatic response.
6. David Oyelowo gets roped into a dead-end gag - WORST
Called it. RT #Oscars ceremony in a single GIF: http://t.co/G3Rg6lJuSw pic.twitter.com/jIbqwP4CDM
â€" Amber (@amberfi) February 23, 2015
As if we needed further evidence that David Oyelowo is a formidable acting talent who deserved to be recognised with a nomination, witness his expression in the gif above, which sums up our feelings about this year's ceremony pretty deftly.
This joke was pretty much doomed from the start - are we really still doing the thing about British accents and how they make things sound better/sexier/more evil? Harris roped Oyelowo into a joke about Annie to test this theory. It... didn't really work.
7. John Legend and Common perform 'Glory' from Selma - BEST
Which brings us onto the head-and-shoulders greatest performance of the night. This spine-tingling rendering of what would become the Best Song winner was so utterly spectacular that it re-energised the ceremony at a low point.
There's really no more we can say about this. Just watch it for yourself.
8. A tone-deaf balls joke - WORST
Seriously. We need a larger font for this, because this moment was the very worst.
Director Dana Perry, collecting her Best Documentary Short award for Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1, was the second winner of the night to successfully silence the orchestra.
Perry did so by making a clear, powerful and emotional statement about her son's suicide. "We need to talk about suicide out loud," was the note she concluded on. Mere seconds afterwards, Harris returned to the stage... to make a joke about her dress.
We'll give the host the benefit of the doubt and suggest that maybe he didn't hear the end of her speech. Maybe. Somehow. That is the only way in which this moment can be anything other than horrifying.
9. The Birdman/Whiplash crossover you've been waiting for - BEST
Some kind of meta-Birdman scene recreation was probably inevitable, and it was as good an excuse as any for Neil Patrick Harris to get into his underwear - better this than a Gone Girl re-enactment, right?
But this segment got a whole lot better with the surprise inclusion of Miles Teller, who cropped up as Whiplash's Andrew Neiman in place of the jazz drummer who torments Riggan Thompson throughout Birdman. Well played all round.
10. Batman's cameo - BEST
Okay, so 'Everything Is Awesome' might not have the weight of later performances, but it was an enjoyably manic and acid-tinged kickoff to the evening that reminded us all once again of how ludicrous The Lego Movie's animation snub is.
But what really elevated this Tegan and Sara number was the surprise appearance by Will Arnett's Batman, who growled out a couple of verses of his 'Untitled Self-Portrait' ("Darkness. No parents.") before retreating back into the shadows.
We're on record as big fans of Batman's singing prowess, so this was always going to go over well with us.
11. Lady Gaga pays tribute to The Sound of Music for reasons - WORST
Why? A number of hours on, we're still asking.
Here's the thing -Â there was nothing exactly wrong with Gaga's seemingly endless performance. But it came at an utterly inexplicable point in the running order, three hours into what was already an incredibly over-long show, and nobody seemed to be able to explain why we were paying tribute to an already widely-acknowledged classic.
It didn't help that this number had to follow 'Glory', which felt very much like it should have been the final musical performance of the night.
12. "Stay weird. Stay different." - BEST
One of the more surprising wins of the night was Graham Moore for The Imitation Game's screenplay, and he also gave the surprising standout speech of the night.
Framing his acceptance within the context of Alan Turing's appalling treatment and tragic demise, Moore dedicated his speech to misfits around the world.
"I would like to tell that kid out there who feels weird to stay weird, stay different," Moore advised. "And when it's your turn to stand on this stage, pass the message along."
13. An elegant In Memoriam montage - BEST
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Post by The Academy.
These things are very, very difficult to do well. But from the moment Meryl Streep read out that quote from Joan Didion - "If a single person is missing for you, then the whole world is empty" -Â it was clear the Academy had got it right this year.
Though Harris's opening number paid homage to moving pictures, it was the simplicity of still images that made this sequence so effective, each name memorialised with a beautiful watercolour-style portrait.
And crucially, the Academy recognised Bob Hoskins, where BAFTA shamefully failed to do so two weeks ago.
Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture, mental health, and true crime. She loves owls, hates cilantro, and can find the queer subtext in literally anything.
