THE OSCARS 2014

Dolby Theatre, Los Angeles (L.A), Sunday, March 2 2014 – Red carpets were rolled out as movie and film junkies waited for the most-anticipated award show of the year, The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars. The Oscars is an annual American awards ceremony honouring achievements in the film industry, whereby winners are given the Oscar statuette (Academy Award of Merit). The Oscars is also the oldest entertainment awards ceremony with its equivalents: The Golden Globes for film and television, Emmy awards for American television, Tony awards for theatre and the Grammy awards for music and recording, being modelled after the Oscars. Considered one of the most exciting Academy awards in years, the 86th Academy Awards was a race jam-packed with many critically acclaimed contenders. This year’s Oscars 2014 was hosted by the talented Ellen Degeneres and the list of nominees included Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Lupita Nyong’O, and fan-favourite Leonardo Di Caprio. Highlights of the show included the record-breaking, most retweeted selfie of all time by Ellen Degeneres. Also, Robert Lopez and Kristin Anderson won the best original song for ‘Let It Go’ from the animated blockbuster ‘Frozen’, giving Lopez the rare EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards) status. No one can argue with the fact that one of the most memorable wins of all time was when first time nominee, 31-year-old Lupita Nyong'o, of Mexian and Kenyan descent, won the Oscar for her first feature film role ’12 Years a Slave’, beating the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Sally Hawkins, June Squibb and Julia Roberts. Needless to say, the audience rose to their feet for a standing ovation. Oscars 2014 was significant as the diversity gap between the whites and people of colour has always been highly controversial, especially in the film industry. In fact, according to Lee and Low Books, there have been no Oscar acting winners of Latino, Asian or even Native American descent. Similarly, Blacks have only made up 4% of the Oscar winners in the last 85 years of Academy Awards. Is this a result of prejudice and stereotypical mindsets or just simply a matter of pure coincidence? On the other hand, the Oscars also showed us that even the most famous of actors and actresses are not infallible. Some of the hilarious defining moments include Jennifer Lawrence tripping over her gown at the Oscars just like she did in 2013. Another incident was John Travolta making a mess of Broadway goddess Idina Menzel’s name, introducing her as what sounded like ‘Adele Dazeen’, for her performance of ‘Let It Go’ as one of the nominated songs. This sparked off a lot of attention especially on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. It even led to some controversy with Travolta fans defending him for his mistake and justifying that the mistake was due to his dyslexia. Meanwhile, Menzel fans retorted that he should have memorized his script, given the importance of this event. On the whole, the Oscars 2014 was truly an emotional and touching event, overflowing with more-than-deserving winners, many quotable speeches like that of Nyong’O’s tearful acceptance speech as well as Jared Leto’s appreciation speech. To check out the full list of winners, live feeds and videos, visit the official website at http://oscar.go.com/