12 moments worth seeing from the 2014 Oscars

 
So, the 2014 Oscars have finally been and gone. I was live blogging it all over at the Bournemouth Rock and it was a very interesting night, for a variety of reasons.

Ellen DeGeneres is receiving incredible praise for her turn as host, which took in everything from digging at Meryl Streep to pizza, via the best selfie in the history of the world. That’s not an exaggeration.

You obviously don’t want to wade through almost four hours – yes, four! – of ceremony, so I’ve helped you out. Here are the 12 essential moments worth seeing from the 2014 Oscars.

 

1. Jennifer Lawrence fell over again, but didn’t even make it past the red carpet  this year

Courtesy of Matt’s GIFs

 

2. Ellen DeGeneres nailed her opening monologue, banishing the memory of ‘We Saw Your Boobs’

Compare this…

To this…

 
The pick of the gags was the seemingly customary nod towards Meryl Streep’s awards season ubiquity.

“One of the nominees is Her, and by ‘her’, I mean Meryl Streep.”

 

3. Jared Leto acknowledged the unrest in Ukraine and Venezuela in his acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor

“To all the dreamers out there in the world watching this tonight in places like Ukraine and Venezuela, I wanna say: we are here, and as you struggle to make your dreams happen, to live the impossible; we are thinking of you tonight.”

Courtesy of thedrawbridgeisclosing
 
 

4. Pharrell Williams danced with Meryl Streep, and it was epic

Courtesy of Matt’s GIFs

 

5. Lupita Nyong’o made everyone cry with a hell of an acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress

Courtesy of tildren

 

6. Bill Murray dropped in a poignant, impromptu tribute to Harold Ramis when he presented the prize for Best Cinematography

Courtesy of venatorphile

 

7. Ellen started handing out pizza to everyone about halfway through and Brad Pitt saved Meryl Streep with an emergency plate

That really happened. On our planet and everything.
 

8. Pink sung a celebration of The Wizard of Oz, and it rocked

 

 

9. Idina Menzel got rushed through a pretty poor performance of ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen, right after John Travolta got her name wrong

This is straight-up odd. John Travolta made a right mess of Idina Menzel’s name as he introduced her performance, with the star looking visibly shaken from the moment she started to sing.

The show was running long which led to the song being truncated and the band playing a bizarrely up-temp version of the song, clearly fazing the Broadway veteran Menzel.

Shocking stuff.
 

 

10. For about a second, it really looked like Matthew McConaughey was going to kiss Jared Leto

He kisses his wife, leans towards Leto and… oh wait, no.
 

 

11. 12 Years A Slave won Best Picture and Steve McQueen was really happy

Courtesy of itsagameoffthrones

 

12. And finally… the selfie that is now the most retweeted image in the history of Twitter and indeed broke the social network for about half an hour

At the time of writing, this has been retweeted more than 2 million times.

Courtesy of @TheEllenShow

 
Were there any special moments from the 2014 Oscars that you think should be on this list? And what did you think of the ceremony in general? Have your say in the comments section below.