It sure was another Academy Awards

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If you follow, even casually, the industry news from the States, you'd be aware that the studios are desperate to lure people back to cinemas.

(It turns out Americans are watching more movies than ever, but predominantly at home via Netflix and iTunes etc etc.)

So, instead of, say, lowering ticket prices and doing away with ridiculous things like the "3D tax" that pushes tickets beyond $20, they decided to make the theme of the 84th annual Academy Awards "Let's go to the movies" (they left the ", please!" off the end of it for space's sake).

Hosted by Billy Crystal and produced by Brian Grazer, as a relatively last-minute draft-in team following Eddie Murphy's dropping out when Brett Ratner was sacked as producer after that pesky homophobic rant, it was nostalgia all the way. Here's Crystal's now trademark opening montage:



(No, you're not imagining it, he really did revive his Sammy Davis Jr impersonation from 1998 and, prior to that, his SNL days four decades ago. Nostalgia! Blackface! Let's go to the movies!)

So, what else happened?

1. People are assholes!

Yep, the social media race to the bottom drove the Oscars' ratings up again this year as people engaged in a game of one-downmanship that left me thinking of Charlie Brooker's wise words, "Come, friendly asteroids, and fall on earth". Here are some lowlights:



- That's what comedian Julie Klausner tweeted when Miss Piggy was onscreen. GET FUCKED.

- The Week Magazine whined about Gabourey Sidibe's "implausibly masturbatory" soundbite in Bennett Miller's talking-heads package. That's right, dude, because a black woman talking about the representation of black women in film - “If I see myself on screen, I know that I exist” - is totally masturbatory! RITE?! (Incidentally I really liked Miller's video packages. And good on them for getting him in to film them, since Moneyball was so cruelly ignored by The Artist's juggernaut.)

- Body policing all up in this Oscars: I won't even bother screencapping all the bullshit I saw, but it ranged from calling Angelina Jolie "skeletor" to complaining about Melissa McCarthy's dress to Billy Crystal fat-shaming Jonah Hill in his opening monologue.

FOR THE LAST TIME AND THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY: JUST SHUT UP ABOUT EVERYBODY ELSE'S BODIES, OKAY?!

Now, let's move on.

2. I want to be BFFs with J-Lo and Cameron Diaz!

These two dames came out to present the makeup awards, and decided to throw to camera after the nominees were announced with a little bit of Vogueing. Then they corpsed:



Can we hang out, guys? We can try on dresses and then make burritos??

3. Glenn Close loves her BFF Meryl Streep

It's become a sourpuss game to tally the responses of the "losers" at awards ceremonies, and to be sure, there are often some very thin smiles as the nominees applaud the one who "the Oscar goes to" (word has it Rooney Mara was found sobbing in the dunnies after the show). However, I just loved Glenn Close's response (bittersweet, given her Albert Nobbs was something she'd worked on for decades) when her mate Meryl Streep was announced as Best Actress:

Meryl:


...And Glenn:


4. The "behind the scenes" people are all adorable
ALL of the night's best speeches (which are of course not online, because nobody cares about the tech side of things) came from winners in categories such as Editing, Sound Editing, Cinematography, Makeup Effects, and so on. Particularly charming was the Best Editing team of Angus Wall and "our" Kirk Baxter, who dorked around on stage before Baxter guffawed "Let's get out of here" and they rushed off. But not before shouting out "There's the Roons!" and helping to reveal what Rooney Mara looks like when she's not being a Gothic ice queen:





5. Zach Galifianakis and Will Ferrell
Inexplicably, the funniest moment of the night - Ferrell and Galifianakis presenting Best Song while playing the cymbals - is not available in embeddable, or even watchable, video form. So you'll just have to enjoy this GIF:



6. Jason Segel and Tina Fey react to the spilling of "Kim Jong Il's" ashes by "The Dictator" on the red carpet:





7. Rose Byrne and Melissa McCarthy play our Oscars drinking game:

Our own "official" Oscars drinking game included the following:

HAVE A SIP OF BEER IF/WHEN:
- Martin Scorsese and his wife Helen Morris blink at the camera in unison and look like moles.

AND LOOK!







8. Angelina Jolie is a BAMF:



Ah, get stuffed everyone. That's how you make a dress like that look gooooood.

And finally...

9. Meryl Streep is awesome:



See you next year, kids!