2015 Oscar moments: A recap

LOS ANGELES — Was this the best Oscars ceremony we’ve seen? No, not really. But that’s not to say there weren’t some highlights happening on and off-camera throughout the show. Here are some of our favourites:

COOL QUOTE #1. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, director of Best Picture winner Birdman, probably had the most endearing quote of the night. “It’s so good, it feels like Mexico,” he said, after responding in Spanish to a few Spanish-language questions from the press backstage. Speaking of Birdman, the show’s host Neil Patrick Harris performed a clever homage to Birdman: Locked out of his dressing room clad only in his tighty-whities, he dashed through back hallways, spoofing Michael Keaton’s similarly undressed stride through Times Square, with similar percussion accompaniment, until he reached the stage to declare sheepishly, “Acting is a noble profession”.

COOL QUOTE #2. Singers and songwriters Common and John Legend were backstage in the middle of explaining their roles as storytellers when members of the press with eyes on a television monitor nearby visibly reacted to Julianne Moore’s Best Actress win. “Who just won?” Common asked, interrupting himself and learning it was Moore. “Y’all knew she was getting that,” he added.

NO RESPITE FOR TRAVOLTA. John Travolta still can’t live down his mangling of Idina Menzel’s name from last year’s Academy Awards when he called her Adele Dazeem. This year, host Neil Patrick Harris mentioned Benedict Cumberbatch then said, “It’s not only the most awesome name in show business, it’s also the sound you get when you ask John Travolta to pronounce Ben Affleck.”

Harris added that the next presenter had “been on the receiving end” of Travolta’s pronunciations, and Menzel took the stage to present the award for Best Song. She then introduced “my very dear friend Glom Gazinga”.

“I deserved that,” Travolta said as he nuzzled her onstage, calling her “my beautiful, my wickedly talented Idina Menzel”.

Menzel responded: “It’s not like it’s going to follow me around for the rest of my life.”

“Tell me about it,” Travolta countered.

As he was about to read the winner of the best song award, she said, “You want me to do it?”

(Menzel did indeed read the winner.)

MERYL REALLY LIKED IT. Meryl Streep cheered, pointed and shouted “Yes! Yes! Yes!” as Patricia Arquette ended her Oscar acceptance speech with a call for wage equality for women. Arquette, who won Best Supporting Actress for portraying the mother in Boyhood, had just beaten Streep for the award and had read a long list of thank-yous and thrown in a plug for GiveLove.com, which advocates for ecological sanitation, when she changed themes. “To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen in this nation: We have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality in the US,” she said. This had many people on their feet and cheering. “Made my night,” Streep told Arquette backstage.

BEST SPOKEN WORD. Try to play Pawel Pawlikowski off stage, will you? Forget about it. The director, accepting the Oscar for Best Foreign Film for Ida, mumbled something about ending his acceptance speech when the music that was his cue to wrap it up started playing. Then he just kept talking until the orchestra finally gave up and stopped playing. Among those he thanked, as the audience cheered, were his late wife and parents, his children and his film crew, “who were in the trenches with us and who are totally drunk now”.

COOL QUOTE #3. Adam Levine performs huge concerts with his band, Maroon 5, and appears weekly on The Voice. But performing at the Academy Awards - well, that’s another thing altogether. He had just three words when he walked off stage after his performance of Lost Stars. “****!” was the first one, followed by “God!” and then “bllllggggrh”. With that, he dashed off to the green room.

UNSELFISH SELFIE. Ellen DeGeneres may have taken the selfie of all selfies at last year’s Oscar show. But this year’s Reese Witherspoon snaps were the hit of the red carpet fan bleachers. In an off-shoulder black and silvery grey gown, Witherspoon took grinning photos of herself in front of the bleachers as fans whooped with delight.

WHAT’S OSCAR UP TO? The glittery stage setting at the Dolby Theater was eye-popping. But if you looked closely, you saw the many oversized Oscar statuettes that adorned it were impaled on their rods like pogo sticks, or astride them like pole dancers. A little nod to Fifty Shades Of Grey, perhaps?

HARRIS GOING TOO FAR? Some say Broadway and television did Hollywood a favour by sharing Neil Patrick Harris for duties hosting the Oscars. That he stewarded an Oscarcast that made up in charm what it lacked in suspense. But occasionally, smart-aleck Harris’ mischief might have crossed the line. A wisecrack directed at Oprah Winfrey at the top of the show flopped. And it was unclear just what he was getting at, if anything, when he said that whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary CitizenFour, “could not be here tonight for some treason”.

COOL QUOTE #4. It was no shock when JK Simmons’ name was called for Best Supporting Actor Oscar in Whiplash. His acceptance remarks were refreshing, though, as he offered a shout-out for parents around the globe. Pivoting from praise for his wife’s parenting of their three children, he urged the legions watching to “call your mum, call your dad.” And no texts or emails, either. “Call them on the phone and tell `em you love `em, and thank them and listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you. “Thank you, mum and dad,” he said as he left the podium.

COOL QUOTE #5. Graham Moore, winner of Best Adapted Screenplay for The Imitation Game, dedicated his win to any youngsters who felt they were different and don’t fit in. Declared Moore, who said he attempted suicide as a teen because of his own discomfort: “Stay weird, stay different, and when it’s your turn and you’re standing on this stage, pass the message to the next person who’s coming along.”

BATHROOM BREAK. The Oscars show typically inserts an overlong, gratuitous element into the proceedings to slow things down and really try the audience’s patience. A fine but excessive golden-anniversary tribute to The Sound Of Music was this year’s entry, complete with film clips, a medley by Lady Gaga and reminiscences by its star, Julie Andrews. It was heartwarming, sure. But much too late.

LINGERING LOSERS. While attendees like Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman headed straight for the exit after Birdman was crowned Best Picture at the Oscars, other celebs lingered inside the Dolby Theatre. Bradley Cooper, Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep - who all lost in their respective Academy Award categories - stuck around and posed for selfies with the Oscars they actually took home: The Lego renditions they were handed by backup dancers during the performance of Everything Is Awesome, the Oscar-nominated song from The Lego Movie. AP