Ellen DeGeneres was her usual spontaneous self on Sunday night, and made the 2014 Oscar ceremony a lot more fun to watch than the 2013 ceremony, which was hosted by Seth McFarlane. McFarlane was so bad that he would likely wind up near the bottom of “the best and worst Oscar hosts” if the list were published again this year.
This year’s ceremony included a few singular achievements:
1) The “selfie” photo taken during the ceremony became the most retweeted tweet ever, and caused Twitter to briefly crash.
2) Steve McQueen became the first black director to win the Best Picture Award. He is not an America citizen, but he is not the first foreign director to win the Best Picture award, since there have been a few over the years. Mr. McQueen is his very own “melting pot”, since he comes from Grenadian and Trinidadian descent, and has homes in London and the Netherlands. In view of the fact that he has only directed three feature films, his Best Picture award is very remarkable.
3) Lupita Nyong’o is one of the few actors or actresses that have won an Oscar for their debut performance in a feature film. She also is not an America citizen, since she has dual membership in Kenya and Mexico. She was cast in her role in 12 Years a Slave even before she graduated from Yale School of Drama. She also happens to be fluent in 4 languages (Luo, English, Swahili, and Spanish).
4) The pizza delivery guy (an Armenian named Edgar Martirosyan) ultimately got a $1000 tip.
5) Sidney Poitier (the first black man to win an Oscar) is definitely showing his age (he’s 87). Like Lupita, he also holds dual citizenship (United States and the Bahamas) and he is STILL the Bahamian ambassador to Japan, a post that he has held since 1997. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2009.
Fire up the popcorn. Let’s go see some movies !
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