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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Stuart Heritage, Hadley Freeman, Peter Bradshaw, Imogen Fox, Hannah Marriott, Rory Carroll, Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Benjamin Lee , Steven W ThrasherHenry Barnes, Catherine Shoard

Oscars 2015: The red carpet, ceremony and reaction as it happens

Alejandro González Iñárritu
And the biggest winner is … Alejandro González Iñárritu, who won best film, best director and best original screenplay for Birdman at the 87th Academy Awards, and the film picked up a fourth Oscar for cinematography. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images) Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

That's a wrap

300-odd blogposts later and we are done. Yes, Birdman earned the chance to preen: it’s a film that’s daring and truly cinematic, unlike the more straightforward dramas in this year’s race. But most of all we learned that you should never let John Travolta anywhere near a human woman. That’s all – thanks for joining us.

Zing!

Benjamin Lee has done a roundup of all the best and worst things that happened on Twitter during the ceremony, many of the latter pertaining to John Travolta.

Steve Martin is at the Vanity Fair party and all he can do is tweet pictures of the food. Where is Benedict Cumberbatch dancing, Steve?

Oops.

Our critic Peter Bradshaw, who’s sat through more Oscar ceremonies than Meryl, has given his verdict on the night.

The Academy had already come close to disgracing itself by snubbing Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo from Selma, the film about Martin Luther King. Now it has further failed to distinguish itself with something that is almost another snub — failing to give the best picture award to Richard Linklater’s marvellous Boyhood. It had the chance to mark out a real classic, and in so doing reinforce the Oscar’s own brand-value. But no.

Read the whole thing here.

Updated

Speaking backstage, Alejandro Iñárritu paid tribute to Fox Searchlight for bucking the film industry’s “horrible corporate mentality” by taking a risk on Birdman.

“They trusted me. It was incredible.. because it could have been a disaster.”

He joked that he persuaded the studio “Mexican-style” and indicated his hip: “I showed them my gun.”

Iñárritu said artists needed to be bold. “Fear is the condom of life. It doesn’t allow you to enjoy things.”

Asked what a four-Oscar sweep meant for his career, he replied: ‘I don’t have a career. I have a life. And today I am living it beautifully.’

Sean Penn’s joke when he announced the best film prize – he asked who gave Iñárritu a green card – did not offend him in the least. “I found it hilarious.”

He had teased Penn mercilessly on the set of 21 Grams, said the director, and he had a strong friendship with the actor.

Eddie Redmayne, clutching his statuette backstage, said he would email Stephen Hawking and his former wife Jane Wilde later that night, and hoped to visit them soon. “Any excuse to go back to Cambridge. It’s such a beautiful place.”

The whole Oscar experience “felt like a dream”, he said.

Receiving the award from Cate Blanchett, whom he met as a young, unknown actor on Elizabeth: The Golden Age, made his heart race as he mounted the stage, he said.

“I was recovering from that excitement.. and then trying to bury this frenzy of nerves and white noise. I felt euphoria.”

Singing a song from Les Misérables at the 2013 Oscars was even more nerve-racking, said the actor, grinning as he rocked and cradled the statuette in his arms.

Redmayne said he had no grand career plans in the wake of the award. “Retaining employment will keep me very happy.”

Updated

But who wore it better?

Monica
Photograph: YouTube
Lady Gaga
Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Only just realised this was a thing. Last three seconds are special:

Obligatory Benedict Cumberbatch gif that will have everyone swooning over his jauntily anti-establishment British ways:

Is this heartfelt or just a colossal amount of shade being thrown? We can’t decide:

Jenifer Lopez has had a nice line in power-selfies:

Also this:

Updated

Even Mexicans are winning at memes tonight:

Conservatives are sad that American Sniper didn’t win more.

WAKE UP AMERICA!

Updated

Travolta’s chills are multiplying and no woman is safe:

TRAVOLTA
Photograph: Paul Buck/EPA

Inarritu, doing wonders for sexual health campaigning:

Updated

Some nice Academy Instagrams

Fish, three ways. What could be nicer?

Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog points out that the bookmakers got the big six categories all correct:

The important thing to do now, UK Oscars viewers, is to grab some sleep because – if my calculations are correct – we’re about two and a half hours away from sitting through an excruciating drunken Good Morning Britain interview with Rita Ora outside an Oscars party somewhere. Those are always the best bits.

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Fight for your right... to Asti.

Patricia Arquette has many in raptures, like Lena Dunham:

Not everyone is happy though, at her post-win press conference in particular. This sums it up:

Hadley’s being a right charmer:

Oprah, as producer of Selma, might have expected a high five from Common but NO YOU CAN’T OPRAH, DENIED:

Late-in-the-day shout out for this video of Robert Duvall trying to care about being asked what he’s wearing:

Here’s all the big laughs from the night. Brace your sides for, well, a moderate splitting:

Here’s Paweł Pawlikowski picking up his Ida gong. Best speech of the night?

Updated

I’m going to take a lot from tonight’s ceremony. I’ve learned that an X Factor-style sob story is the best way to escape a playing-off. I’ve learned that nothing sticks in the mind like the sight of an actor overdoing a simple introduction of a clips package. I’ve learned that if you want to be invited to present at the Oscars every year, you should muddle someone’s name and then relentlessly grope their face. Most of all, I’ve learned that I should probably get a UK broadcaster to show Empire at some point.

Updated

Twitter people are angry on two counts. Well, hundreds of counts but there are specific instances for this Oscars. First: Gone Girl’s ending being spoiled.

Second thing: people beefing Sean Penn for saying “who gave this guy a green card?” in reference to Iñárritu (they worked together on 21 Grams so it’s probably all gravy):

Updated

And with “Who gave this son of a bitch this green card?” Sean Penn gave a whole new political spin about race and the Oscars. None of the movies I had been pondering, which dealt with black and white racial identity (Selma and American Sniper) – and Boyhood, which briefly but embarrassingly dealt with a lone Hispanic character – were big winners. It was Birdman, with its Oscar winning Mexican screenwriter (Alejandro González Iñárritu), director (Iñárritu again) and cinematographer (Emmanuel Lubezki), that won the big awards.

It wasn’t a big night for overly white films, or for black film-makers, but for Mexican film-makers.

And right before awarding the best director Oscar to Iñárritu, presenter Sean Penn said: “Who gave this son of a bitch this green card?”

Iñárritu was gracious, joked about the Academy needing to revise immigration policy because “two Mexicans in a row, that’s suspicious” (Alfonso Cuarón won best director last year for Gravity), and talked passionately about the need for poltical reform in Mexico (and for immigration reform for Mexican Americans).

But Sean Penn’s joke was tacky – kind of like when Lemony Snicket made a watermelon joke when Jacqueline Woods won a National Book Award.

A weird final presentation before Neil Patrick Harris said: “Buenas noches.”

Updated

Speaking backstage Common said he and John Legend felt duty bound to use the Oscar platform to project the message that the struggle for equality depicted in Selma continued. “To whom much is given much is required. How could you not say anything? … I feel it’s our duty to do it.”

Updated

That's a wrap – but we're not done yet

So here’s all the big news of the night. The Grand Budapest Hotel and Birdman were the big winners, the latter with the most prestigious awards. Every best picture nominee went home with something. Head here for a big roundup from film editor Catherine Shoard.

And with that, as we’re left staring at the blank featureless face of a giant Oscar trophy, we’re done. A mixed evening, and one that was sometimes hard to sit through. I was wrong about Neil Patrick Harris, but perhaps a fresh set of eyes tomorrow will judge his performance a little more kindly. Thanks for sitting through it all with us. Now let’s all go and stretch our legs. It’s been hours.

Updated

Well. Whoa. Whoa? Whoa! That was the real upset. Not just director but best picture. I have to say however much I love Birdman (and I do) I’m very disappointed that Boyhood — a genuine classic with genuine staying power — has been overlooked in favour of this film. Well, it has wonderful vivacity, wonderful wit, wonderful exuberance and invention with a great role for Michael Keaton and a raft of great acting opportunities for a big cast. Well done to Iñárritu, a very distinctive talent. But I’m sad for Boyhood and I feel that it’s the wrong answer.

Updated

“Two Mexicans in a row? That’s suspicious” says Iñárritu. He’s been the most intentionally funny man onstage all night, providing some much-needed light-footedness in a night lousy with Big Political Speeches. Perhaps he should host next year. Just a thought.

Updated

WIN! Best picture: Birdman

Birdman triumphs! Boyhood snubbed! But it’s a huge night for Iñárritu, who bags director, screenplay, and the biggest prize of all.

“I pray that we can find and build a government that we deserve – and for the ones who live in the USA, I pray that they can be treated with the same respect as the ones who came before, and help to continue building this great immigrant nation,” he says.

Full news story

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Ohh, it was a magic trick all along. He’s referencing all the big moments from the ceremony. It sort of worked? I guess? Although, that said, there’s probably a reason why episodes of Dynamo: Magician Impossible don’t last for four and a half hours.

Julianne Moore has clearly been bubbling on the verge of tears this entire evening. It is a classy and thoroughly worked-through, thought-through performance and the obvious winner. (Alec Baldwin played her husband — just as he did for Cate Blanchett last year!) A performance to compare with Julie Christie and Judi Dench in similar roles.

Updated

And now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for - the pay-off to Neil Patrick Harris’s briefcase in a box gimmick. This had better be good, because it feels like I’ve been waiting for this moment for several lifetimes.

Updated

BINGO EXTRA! More parody accounts, this time of Michael Keaton

This is a bold new formula for the acceptance speech. Usually the tears begin during the speech itself. Moore, though, apparently started crying at some point in the middle of the afternoon, and then got it together right before she started talking. This is incredibly sweet.

Updated

WIN! Best actress: Julianne Moore

The actress gets it for Still Alice – fifth time lucky. Read about her win here.

Julianne Moore.
Julianne Moore. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Updated

Matthew McConaughey might look exactly like wilderness-era Shia LaBeouf at the moment, but he’s exactly the presenter that the Oscars need right now, all rangy charisma and flower over-pronunciation. He just stretched Julianne Moore’s name out across about twelve syllables, for crying out loud. The man is a hero.

Julianne Moore and Matthew McConaughey.
Julianne Moore and Matthew McConaughey. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Eddie Redmayne’s performance is one of idealism and decency in a movie which is far more complex and difficult than many realise — certainly more complex than any fiction feature featuring a fictional, madeup disabled scientist. Redmayne has matured so hugely as a performer in the past few years. Well done him.

Updated

And, with that, Michael Keaton slowly and sadly puts the gum he’s been chewing all night back in his mouth, and quietly wishes that it was him onstage pretending to be electrocuted by a statuette. But it wasn’t to be.

Updated

WIN! Best actor: Eddie Redmayne

The Theory of Everything actor wins, in perhaps the closest race of the night. Read more here. He says:

“Thank you. Thank you. I don’t think I’m capable of articulating quite how I feel right now. I’m fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man. This Oscar belongs to all of those people around the world battling ALS. It belongs to one exceptional family – Stephen, Jane and the Hawking children. I will be his custodian. I will be at his beck and call. I wait on him hand and foot. Thank you to Hannah, my wife. I love you – we have a new fella coming to share our apartment.”

This means that it’s a very even-handed Oscars:

Updated

Screenwriter Graham Moore used his speech time to say: “When I was 16 years, I tried to kill myself. And now I am standing, for that kid out there, who thinks she’s weird or she’s different.” It was a touching moment. Neil Patrick Harris is gay, and Hollywood is no stranger to mentioning gay rights. But conversations about gay rights have been wrapped up in America almost exclusively in talk of the marriage equality movement. So it was nice to hear Moore talk about the dangerous difficulties of life for gay people on the margins, especially given Turing’s personal troubles.

Just as I thought. Just as we all thought. The Academy was just as dazzled, just as thrilled, just as amused — and just as flattered — as we thought they would be. Birdman was a bravura performance for a director: superbly controlled. The film was in great hands and so were we, the audience. It was simply an intensely pleasurable experience and Inarritu shaped it.

Updated

Alejandro G. Iñárritu reveals that he’s wearing Michael Keaton’s underpants in his acceptance speech. Which, obviously, is great news for everyone who wants to see the phrase ‘It smells like balls’ appear in future montages of great Oscars acceptance speeches.

Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu accepts the best director award.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu accepts the best director award. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Updated

Graham Moore’s win for The Imitation Game’s shonky script baffled a fair few. Helluva speech though:

WIN! Best director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

The Birdman director wins, for his twists and turns around a New York theatre – and for drawing out some often great performances. Iñárritu is wearing Keaton’s “tighty-whities” apparently. Read about it here.

“Tonight I am wearing the real Michael Keaton tighty whities. They worked, I am here,” he says. “But talking about that little prick called ego: ego loves competition, because for someone to win, someone has to lose. But the paradox is that true art can’t be compared, can’t be labelled, can’t be defeated. My work and the work of my fellow nominees will be judged only by time.”

Updated

So finally some love for The Imitation Game. Graham Moore’s screenplay was serviceable and fluent but for me it wasn’t the most interesting thing about this (flawed) film. That was Cumberbatch. I am pretty uneasy about the liberties it took with history, and by that token with the source material. It was certainly heartfelt, but pretty middling compared to Inherent Vice.

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If there was ever a reason to have Oprah Winfrey host the Oscars next year, the way she announced Graham Moore’s name was it. She said it like she was calling after a goat that just drowned in quicksand. She said it like she was casting a spell in anger. She said it, and she meant it. She’d be a brilliant Oscars host.

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Who knew that Iñárritu could write comedy? And who knew he could write it about American showbusiness? I certainly didn’t expect that from his previous work, which had a bedrock of plangent seriousness. But it had an ostentatious and old-fashioned written-ness with huge speeches, back-and-forth dialogue, crafted mock-theatrical writing, and plenty of zingers.

Updated

WIN! Best adapted screenplay: The Imitation Game

Graham Moore wins. It doesn’t go home empty handed, unlike at the Baftas.

Updated

And here’s Oprah, to present best adapted screenplay, and also to audition for next year’s Oscar-hosting job. Which she should totally do, by the way.

Oprah Winfrey presents the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.
Oprah Winfrey presents the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

Updated

BINGO! Acceptance speech in a foreign language

Still got a laugh though!

Eddie Murphy is here to present best original screenplay, and to also remind us of the time that he almost but didn’t host the Oscars. I wish he’d hosted the Oscars. I wish he was hosting the Oscars now. I kind of wish he was liveblogging the Oscars.

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WIN! Best original screenplay: Birdman

Award number two for Birdman. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo win. Michael Keaton “made this film fly” says Iñárritu. Keaton masticates with delight.

If you want to know what the film’s original ending was, head here.

Updated

OK, so I may not think I’m so gay while watching the dresses on the red carpet, but I sure am when I find myself singing along to “Doe a deer, a female deer” from the Sound of Music. It’s like a verbal tic: I can’t stop belting along with Julie Andrews about that lonely goatherd and those Alps. And I feel damn old when I realize I first went to the Sound of Music Singalong when the 50 year old film was celebrating its 35th anniversary.

And while I’m no Lady Gaga fan, she is nailing those “girls in white sashes” which are among a few of my favorite things. Nor can I even help but sing along about that edelweiss which should “bless my homeland forever”, even though those are some creepily nationalistic in Europe circa World War II. For all my braying about the questionable politics of contemporary pop music, I just can’t help myself when Rogers and Hammerstein call me to sing.

I thought it couldn’t get more cross generationally gay than Lady Gaga becoming Mother Superior and singing Climb Every Mountain. But then it did when Gaga hugged Julie - and then Julie thanked Lady Gaga!

Lady Gaga introduces Julie Andrews onstage.
Lady Gaga introduces Julie Andrews onstage. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Updated

Backstage, Laura Poitras links Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations to the FBI’s snooping on civil rights leaders, as depicted in Selma. “This is what happens when there is no oversight.”

Desplat’s music for The Grand Budapest Hotel moved from a canter to a gallop and back; it pulled off the interesting trick of pastiching something not quite identifiable - vague Central European folk and cafe quartet music. Again, probably the best choice.

Updated

Feel cold sweat creep from your entire body as you watch this Vine of John Travolta and Adele Dazeem:

The score for The Grand Budapest Hotel is such that it just made the Oscars audience - cool and beautiful millionaires, the lot of them - clap along like the Strictly Come Dancing audience. That means it definitely deserved the Oscar, right?

Updated

Not everyone is as keen on The Sound of Music as Gaga. Perhaps they would be if they knew what it was?

WIN! Best original score: Alexandre Desplat

The Grand Budapest Hotel’s composer wins – having been nominated six times before without a gong. He was also nominated for The Imitation Game.

Updated

From below the line, someone is after Stuart Heritage’s job:

User avatar for vadid123

'given that it literally just reduced the entire Oscar audience to complete tears.'

Let's face it the show is so bad, Agadoo by Black Lace would have done the same.

And here comes Julie Andrews, to walk on stage and stare Lady Gaga in the eyes and just mouth the word ‘Why?’ over and over again.

Updated

Our own Andrew Pulver’s review of Lady Gaga? “I thought the whole point of her was she was supposed to be covered in meat or something?!”

That was actually pretty great. Let’s get her back to do Mary Poppins next year.

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This is making me feel incredibly uneasy. It’s Lady Gaga singing a very straight version of The Sound of Music, and I’m terrified that she’s either going to go full-on dubstep or strip down to a ham bikini. The tension is killing me.

Lady Gaga.
Lady Gaga. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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BINGO! Parody Twitter account based on dress/accessory/body part

Jared Leto’s umbrella may yet appear, but we already have this:

I think we might be about to see Lady Gaga doing The Sound of Music. I think all our lives are about to peak as one, you know.

Updated

Adding to Julianne’s tears are Chris Pine and David Oyelowo, who blubbed at the moving performance of Glory:

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As good as Everything Is Awesome is, it feels right that Glory won tonight, given that it literally just reduced the entire Oscar audience to complete tears.

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Common and John Legend just won for Glory, the song from the movie Selma. Despite the Academy’s many race problems tonight, this is a big political win. The Oscar for Best Original Song could have gone to Everything Is Awesome, The Lego Movie’s theme song which long ago lost any aspirations it had to be ironic or satirical long ago. Everything Is Awesome has become as toothless as Happy, the type of mindlessly positive song meant to lull sheep into maintaining the status quo.

Glory challenges the status quo, and is the aspect of the film Selma to most directly connect what Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, John Lewis, and Malcolm X were doing in Selma to what activists are doing right now in Ferguson.

“We live in the most incarcerated country in the world,” Legend said in his acceptance speech, bringing up that incarceration is more prevalent for black men now than slavery was in 1850.

It’s great to see, in an evening with sometimes cringeworthy moments of racial discomfort in the Dolby Theater, the structural racism of America’s past and America’s present acknowledged so bluntly by John Legend and Common.

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WIN! Best original song: Glory

Common and John Legend’s Selma track wins, with each coming up to receive the award – and with their nerdy real names announced for all to hear. Congrats to Lonnie Lynn and John Stephens! They soberly highlight the huge numbers of black men incarcerated in the US during their acceptance speech.

Common and John Legend perform.
Common and John Legend perform. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

Updated

“Benedict Cumberbatch is... the name you get when you ask John Travolta to pronounce ‘Ben Affleck’”. Neil Patrick Harris, you’re back in the game.

Updated

The final song to be performed tonight is Glory, by Common and John Legend. So your choices are fizzy exuberant pop, the touching final song ever written by a songwriting legend, a powerful song about important issues, or either Maroon 5 or Rita Ora. There’s a two in five chance that this category will go horribly.

John Legend performs Glory from Selma.
John Legend performs Glory from Selma. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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And one from Snowden himself:

When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I’m grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received. My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world.

Cheer up Julianne – you’re very likely to win!

Updated

“Don’t forget the briefcase in a box” says Neil Patrick Harris, referring to the gimmick first mentioned by the past-life version of him who existed before he’d visibly given up the will to live.

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Congratulations to Laura Poitras. When she filmed Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and myself in Hong Kong, it never occurred to me she had something as ambitious as CitizenFour in mind.

I did not even give much thought to why she was filming: just assumed she wanted a record of events for some undisclosed reason, maybe a low-budget film to be used by privacy campaigners. It came as a surprise when I finally saw it, the sheer professionalism of it, and I had no doubt from that point she would win an Oscar.

Good news for Laura. Good news too for Snowden: he can treat the Oscar as one of his biggest endorsements yet.

Director Laura Poitras, Dirk Wilutzky and journalist Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills accept best documentary feature award for Citizenfour
Director Laura Poitras, Dirk Wilutzky and journalist Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills accept best documentary feature award for Citizenfour. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Joan Rivers
Photograph: Nigel Norrington/Nigel Norrington

Once again, Joan Rivers was the most egregious snub in the tributes to stars who died in the last year – read more in our news piece here.

The commenters are on hand with a beatdown though:

User avatar for Chloe Mondrian

Joan Rivers, an egregious snub in the In Memoriam? She was famous for lambasting actresses for their bad fashion choices, and otherwise calling them "sluts". Not a favorite person in Hollywood at all, at all, at all.

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Anyone associated with this newspaper is bound to feel good or even slightly proprietorial about Citizenfour: it is a very important film and a really important piece of documentary journalism, touching upon democracy and privacy. The absence of Edward Snowden from the stage is telling.

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Interesting response to CitizenFour’s win from the audience there. Julianne Moore was basically in tears. Reese Witherspoon, meanwhile, just about managed a ferociously dainty round of applause that barely managed to conceal her boredom. At this stage of the evening, I know how she feels.

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Patricia Arquette, clutching her Oscar backstage, repeated her call for equality in Hollywood. “It is time for us. Equal means equal.”

It was inexcusable that celebrities travelled the world preaching equal rights when at home “under the surface” women, gays and people of colour struggled to be treated equally, she said.

She called for a constitutional amendment, of federal laws, to end discrimination. Otherwise “we won’t have anything change”.

The speech earned whoops from the media room.

WIN! Best documentary feature: Citizenfour

Much happiness in Guardian towers at the win for Laura Poitras’s Edward Snowden doc – read more here.

Updated

Terrence Howard, hands down, has been my absolute favourite part of the evening. I hope he gets a job presenting Kids Do The Funniest Things out of this. “This next clip... oh man, I’m so blown away by this right now,” he’ll say, lips quivering and eyes brimming with tears, “is a clip of, oh man, it’s such a beautiful clip. It’s a kid getting hit in the nuts with a stick.”

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Here’s Terrence Howard, ostensibly here to introduce clips from Selma and The Imitation Game but really to deliver the most ridiculous audition performance in Hollywood history, because he’s not really in very much stuff any more.

Terrence Howard.
Terrence Howard. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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The editing Oscar for Whiplash is a very popular choice and Tom Cross certainly conjured those rhythmic surges of fear and euphoria and the confrontation between Simmons and Teller, especially in that huge final scene. My choice for editor would have been Sandra Adair for the way she assembled the footage in Boyhood.

Tom Cross accepts the Oscar for best film editing.
Tom Cross accepts the Oscar for best film editing. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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Cumberbatch just said ‘arse’ onstage. This would be shocking if everyone watching hadn’t already been hypnotised into a state of dumb catatonia by this tedious, tedious ceremony.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Naomi Watts.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Naomi Watts. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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WIN! Best editing: Whiplash

Tom Cross wins for the Chazelle drama. That’s three for Whiplash.

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The death-reel has become notorious for possible diplomatic incidents with snubs, oversights and omissions. But I always find it a genuinely melancholy moment in awards ceremony — a fusillade of gloomy mini-lifetime-achievement-award-type stabs of sadness.

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I think they’ve muted the applause. Which is probably a good thing. Also a good thing: Bette Midler isn’t singing Wind Beneath My Wings at them this year either.

I spoke too soon. Richard Attenborough got clapped. As did Robin Williams. And Mike Nichols. Up yours, all the other dead people. I spoke too soon about the other thing, too. Jennifer Hudson’s singing the nearest possible equivalent to Wind Beneath My Wings at them. No lessons have been learned.

A video screen is displayed during In Memoriam for Robin Williams.
A video screen is displayed during In Memoriam for Robin Williams. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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An intriguing death montage update from Hadley Freeman.

Director of Photography Emmanuel Lubezki is one of the visual artistic talents of our time. Gravity, Y Tu Mamá También, The Tree of Life...say what you will about these films, they are all extremely beautiful visually. And it’s extraordinary to think one person “shot” such film diverse films (Gravity also required an extraordinary Director of Photography to oversee what was, in essence, a great deal of animation). That he won for Birdman is worthy, and perhaps a bit surprising, given that most of the mise en scène awards have been going to the Grand Budapest Hotel.

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Meryl Streep quotes Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking to pay tribute to those who died this year. Among those remembered: Mickey Rooney, James Garner, Edward Herrmann, Maya Angelou, Anita Ekberg, Richard Attenborough, Robin Williams, Rod Taylor, Luise Rainer, Lauren Bacall, Misty Upham, Eli Wallach, Gabriel García Márquez, Alain Resnais, Mike Nichols and more. And Bob Hoskins! Unlike Bafta.

But no Joan Rivers:

And many more angry tweets besides. Rivers was of course the queen of the red carpet diss in her prime.

Updated

Meryl’s here! She’s presenting the annual Oscars death montage. I hope the audience doesn’t applaud all the dead people this year.

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Even Wes Anderson’s clapping has perfect symmetry

Another remarkable win for Emmanuel Lubezki (for Birdman) and a very different achievement from his work last year on Gravity. That was all about work in the studio. This was an intensely choreographed camera-work, digitally sutured to create the illusion of unbroken takes, moving from interiors to exterior locations, with challengingly different conditions in terms of light.

Emmanuel Lubezki.
Emmanuel Lubezki. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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Theory: did Emmanuel Lubezki deserve that Oscar, or was his win simply a calculated effort to stop anyone from accidentally saying ‘Dick Poop’ again? You decide.

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I admit it. I was hoping for something for Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner. But production design for The Grand Budapest Hotel is justified. It’s an incredible created world, entire of itself, with a marvellous sense of something 3D springing off the pages of a storybook

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WIN! Best cinematography: Birdman

Emmanuel Lubezki wins two years in a row, having won for Gravity last year. That’s Birdman’s first by the way.

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Brilliant playing off from the orchestra there, chopping off Anna Pinnock before she’d even taken breath. In a way, this is all her fault. Had she yelled ‘SOMEONE I KNOW DIED ONCE’ on the way to the microphone, they wouldn’t have even made a peep.

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Backstage, Dana Perry, the producer of best documentary short Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 laughed off Neil Patrick Harris’s joke about needing “a lot of balls” to wear her pom-pom dress.

“It’s adorable,” she grinned, seemingly genuinely tickled.

She found it in her mother-in-law’s attic, she said. “She had great style in the 60s. This was one of her signature pieces.”

Her co-producer Ellen Goosenberg Kent seemed less amused, as was some reaction on social media, but Perry embraced the joke. “It also keeps me warm. I just got the gown to support the balls.”

Updated

WIN! Best production design: The Grand Budapest Hotel

That’s three now for the Wes Anderson flick. Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock win.

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The highlight of every Oscars ceremony now - the speech from Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. She gets full marks for exaggerating the pioneering spirit of movies, and for exaggerating the responsibilities of the movie business. But she loses all those points for not dropping to her knees and begging the audience not to torrent films any more like the Academy president usually does. Six out of ten.

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Of all the various zings from the Guardian commenters below the line, this is perhaps the most brutally accurate:

User avatar for elmondo2012

What the hell is Adam Levine doing.

I've heard better singing from a mongoose with throat cancer. Things are going form bad to worse.

The Big Hero 6 team were played off! And they capitulated! This is an important stage in the epic fightback between actors and musicians. They’ll get cocky now, the orchestra. Julianne Moore will be lucky if she so much as gets three syllables out before they start parping at her.

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Given that The Lego Movie was unaccountably nixed, Big Hero 6 was probably the best choice. But it’s a teensy bit overrated. There are some lovely, imaginative Japanamerican “fusion” designs and the opening scenes sketching out the boy-robot relationship are great. It becomes a little bit derivative as it sets up the franchise, but a distinctive animation and a worthy winner from this list.

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For no reason, here’s a clip of The Lego Movie

WIN! Best animated feature film: Big Hero 6

Bit of a shock perhaps, beating How To Train Your Dragon 2, which won at the Globes. Read more here.

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Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed talk and talk and talk, but they’re not played off. The orchestra are all too drunk to care now. The timpani player has already pawned off his drum. It’s all very sad. Maybe, if they all close their eyes and believe as hard as they can, they’ll get to play someone off later this evening. Maybe.

Kristina Reed and Patrick Osbourne.
Kristina Reed and Patrick Osbourne. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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WIN! Best animated short film: Feast

Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed win.

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BINGO! Badly matched presenter duo

Kevin Hart looks dinky even next to Anna Kendrick, the dinkiest of all the female actors here tonight.

Anna Kendrick and Kevin Hart.
Anna Kendrick and Kevin Hart. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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I’m not sure about this win. Interstellar isn’t Christopher Nolan’s most visually impressive or inventive film and (heretically) I think this Oscar might more justifiably have gone to X-Men Days Of Future Past. But it’s good to see something go to Interstellar, from which so much was expected.

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Weirdest shade of the night goes to Chloe Moretz, who just used her presentation speech to deliver a bizarre eff-you to William Goldman. I hope this grudge is settled in the most dignified way possible - with a live cagefight this time next year.

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WIN! Best visual effects: Interstellar

Overlooked in the major categories, Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic wins. Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter, Scott R Fisher and Paul J Franklin pile on stage, with the latter Brit thanking all the people to thank.

Ian Hunter, Paul Franklin, Scott Fischer, and Andrew Lockley.
Ian Hunter, Paul Franklin, Scott Fischer, and Andrew Lockley. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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Patricia Arquette just won for best supporting actress for Boyhood. I had my problems with that film, especially the way Arquette’s character had the only scene with a person of color (in which she was the benevolent white woman savior to a cartoonishly grateful Hispanic man). Her character reinforced a kind of white supremacy.

Having said that, Arquette’s performance was pretty impressive. In a movie obsessed with a boy, and in which the only girl character just grows smaller and smaller (played, oddly enough, by director Richard Linkletter’s own daughter), Arquette held her own as a maternal force to be reckoned with. I hated how she interacted with the lone Hispanic character. But I appreciated her challenges, her ambivalence about men, the way she tried to meet her own needs and her family’s (despite an unreliable ex husband) with varying degrees of success.

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Hooray! Rita Ora’s here, hot on the heels of her substantial one-nanosecond-long 50 Shades of Grey role, to sing Grateful from Beyond the Lights. It’s a shame that the Oscars weren’t quicker to utilise the other coaching staff from The Voice UK, because I’d be quite interested to see how that Glen Campbell song would have sounded as a duet between Will.i.am and that bloke from Kaiser Chiefs.

Rita Ora to performs ‘Grateful’ from the film Beyond the Lights
Rita Ora to performs ‘Grateful’ from the film Beyond the Lights. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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Patricia Arquette has made the first overtly political statement of the night, calling for equal pay for women. Meryl Streep in particular reacted well to this, standing up and waving her arms around. There’s a chance that she just did this because she hasn’t won anything yet and she wants to make sure that everyone remembers that she still exists, but let’s assume this isn’t the case.

Patricia Arquette speaks after winning the best supporting actress award
Patricia Arquette speaks after winning the best supporting actress award Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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Paweł Pawlikowski: "Ida is not a holocaust movie"

Backstage, Paweł Pawlikowski said American filmgoers had been given the wrong idea about Ida.

“It’s not a holocaust movie as they call it in the States. Maybe it’s a road movie. It has many layers. For me it’s very Polish ... for me it’s about different versions of Polishness. It’s about faith, identity, sense of guilt, Stalinism, jazz and rock’n’roll too. I wouldn’t make a film just for one reason.”

He lamented that even his extended acceptance speech ended before his key point: that the real prize was his children. “I was about to say these kitsch things which Americans would have loved.”

“I was a lost guy in a weird city”: read our moving interview with Paweł Pawlikowski

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This is an award that I feel genuinely feel very happy about: it’s a pleasing paradox that in a movie which is about maleness in many ways Arquette’s incarnation of motherhood should have turned out to have been so powerful — especially at the end of the film. She crowns a brilliant series of scenes with that glorious final empty-nest scene. And what a great speech.

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It’s a shame there isn’t an Oscar category for sustained performance by an actress who steadfastly refuses to move her jaw when she talks, because I’ve seen The Imitation Game and Keira Knightley would have walked that.

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WIN! Best supporting actress: Patricia Arquette

Everyone called it, as with her supporting actor counterpart: Patricia Arquette wins for Boyhood. Read more here.

In an impassioned climax to her speech, she said: “To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation: we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and it’s our time to fight for equal rights for women in America.”

Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez LOVED it:

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Perhaps it is obvious — but what a well-judged Oscar for sound mixing for Whiplash: the control of the music is tremendous, as is the feel and texture of those drum solos.

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The orchestra didn’t even attempt to play off Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley just then. They’ve all tramped off home, tubas under their arms, cursing everyone’s dead relatives for stopping them doing their job properly.

Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley.
Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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Marvel’s influence is felt EVERYWHERE

WIN!: Best sound editing: American Sniper

First win for the Clint Eastwood drama that’s the night’s big commercial success. Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman bag it.

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Margot Robbie and Miles Teller are presenting a quick retrospective of the Scientific and Technical awards. “These professionals are bravely pushing the boundaries of what cinema is capable of,” says Teller. “All these long words are hurting my pretty little lady-brain!” cries Robbie in confused retaliation. I’m paraphrasing here, but only just. It’s not a great moment, in all honesty.

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WIN! Best sound mixing: Whiplash

Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley step up. That’s two now for Damien Chazelle’s drama.

NPH ripped off our Oscar hustings idea and we want at least a mention on a broadcast going out to tens of millions of people to make up for it

Aha, here comes a Good Bit: Neil Patrick Harris has found himself locked out of his dressing room and has to parade through the auditorium in his underwear, Birdman-style. I can’t wait to see what his hilarious American Sniper spoof will be!

Neil Patrick Harris stands unclothed onstage.
Neil Patrick Harris stands unclothed onstage. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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I just missed Tim McGraw singing a very sad Glen Campbell song that I’m glad I didn’t pay much attention to, because I’ve been drinking a lot of Pepsi and I’m worried that at this point my tears would be pure syrup.

Tim McGraw peforms I’m Not Gonna Miss You.
Tim McGraw peforms I’m Not Gonna Miss You. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Neil Patrick Harris is back, making another one of his collar-tugging references to the Selma business. So far, his performance has been 80% that and 20% making terrible jokes that are far far beneath him. If I go quiet for a few minutes, it’s because I’m watching that Tonys video from earlier and thinking about what could have been.

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BINGO! Posh British actor laughing

David Oyelowo brings the lols with Neil Patrick Harris, who forces him to slag off Annie. Very light chuckles ensue!

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BINGO! Someone you thought was dead

Maureen O’Hara at 94. Still kicking ass and taking names.

Tonight’s orchestra is, let’s face it, a bit mimsying. Winners talk, the orchestra plays, the winners mention a dead person and the orchestra grinds to a halt. At this stage a decision needs to be made - either don’t start playing so early, or go down in history as The Oscars Orchestra That Really Hates All Dead Folk. I’d err for the latter, just to see what happens.

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The fightback against the orchestra interrupting winners citing dead relatives picks up pace

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Andrew Pulver spoke to Mat Kirkby and James Lucas way before they won their live action short Oscar. Like four days before! Find out who they are

Kerry Washington grabs the face of James Lucas onstage after Lucas and Mat Kirkby win for best live action short film.
Kerry Washington grabs the face of James Lucas onstage after Lucas and Mat Kirkby win for best live action short film. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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WIN! Best documentary short film: Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1

Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dana Perry are the winners.

A scene from Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1.
A scene from Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1. Photograph: HBO Documentary Films/AP

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Mat Kirkby and James Lucas also blew through their play-off music. This is cute now, but let’s see how things stand when it’s 5am and the whole thing’s overrun and I’ve missed my train home.

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WIN! Best live action short film: The Phone Call

Sally Hawkins-starring short wins. Mat Kirkby and James Lucas collect the non-Lego gongs. Read more about their journey from burger ad directors to Oscar glory.

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Academy gets rapped knuckles:

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Kerry Washington and Jason Bateman walk onstage to The Look of Love. And, like most loving couples I’ve ever met, they don’t make eye contact and refuse to react to anything that the other one says. Who said romance was dead?

Kerry Washington and Jason Bateman.
Kerry Washington and Jason Bateman. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Killjoy that I am, I have a hard time making sense of the fact Happy was the most memorable Oscar nominated song of 2014, and in 2015 year it’s Everything is Awesome. (I think once upon a time Everything is Awesome was supposed to be satire, but that mission long ago failed, especially tonight.) For all the ways Hollywood likes to pat itself on the back for taking on social issues, you’d rarely know from the music of the Oscars (or even the Grammy’s) that anything, you know, not exactly happy or awesome had happened in the past year.

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Backstage in the press room JK Simmons noted that perhaps he will no longer be principally known for fronting Farmers Insurance ads. “Maybe more people saw me tonight than in the commercials.. this is the cherry on top.”

He had struggled in regional theatre and “lean times” for a long time, he confided, and came close to quitting Hollywood. “I almost got back on the bus a handful of times.

J.K. Simmons, winner of best actor in a supporting role with Lupita Nyong’o in the press room.
J.K. Simmons, winner of best actor in a supporting role with Lupita Nyong’o in the press room. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

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It’s time for a performance of Everything Is Awesome from The Lego Movie. There are cowboys. There are builders. There’s an interlude by Emo Batman. Oprah Winfrey just got handed a Lego statue. This is easily the best thing to happen so far tonight. If Maroon 5 wins best song over this, I’m going to dirty protest right here in my seat.

Tegan Quin and Sara Quin perform ‘Everything Is Awesome’ from The Lego Movie.
Tegan Quin and Sara Quin perform ‘Everything Is Awesome’ from The Lego Movie. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Everything is Awesome!

The Lego Movie gets a minute in the sun, with Tegan and Sara performing Everything is Awesome with The Lonely Island. Lots of Lego statues proffered perhaps in homage to Philip Lord’s perfect response to not getting nominated:

Oprah loves it:

Bonus awesome: Mark Mothersbaugh performs in Devo hat.

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Rolling Stone have a nice Ida fact for us:

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Because Birdman’s score is just a lot of drumming, the Oscars decided to use Crazy by Gnarls Barkley to soundtrack its best picture clips. I can’t work out how insensitive that is, but this is the internet so I’ll just say it’s really insensitive.

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Whoa! I was not expecting that. I really thought best foreign language film would go to Leviathan — but most people were tipping Ida. And they were right. It is a glorious film, luminous, and cold. Incredible to think how Pawlikowski has mutated away from documentary and then mutated away from English-language cinema to his native Polish. A powerful, historically literate movie.

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Paweł Pawlikowski completely blew through his play-off music, there, and it was beautiful. He’s a role model for all future winners. Note to all other future winners: if you want your play-off music to come to a sudden guilty halt, mention your late wife in your acceptance speech. Paweł Pawlikowski is my new hero.

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WIN! Best foreign-language film: Ida

Paweł Pawlikowski triumphs! Read more here. He nearly gets hooked off for going on waaaay too long with his speech. Bravo!

“We make a film about silence and withdrawing from the world and the need for contemplation – and here we are, at the epicentre of world noise and attention. Fantastic – life is full of surprises,” is about 4% of what he said.

Paweł Pawlikowski.
Paweł Pawlikowski. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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I just checked Twitter. Adam Levine is the number one worldwide trend. Adam Levine from Maroon 5. Even though literally every other famous person in the world is in the same room as him. The internet makes me sad.

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BINGO! Mispronunciation

Chiwetel Ejiofor gets mangled!

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Nicole Kidman.
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Nicole Kidman. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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As someone who didn’t really like the Grand Budapest Hotel, and as a gay who doesn’t care much about clothes (I do care a bit more about makeup) I’ll still say the Grand Budapest Hotel deserved to win its costume and makeup Oscars. It’s a plotless film which should really be thought of as a painting that happens to move. The story and acting are pretty irrelevant, and the art direction is the film. So if clothes and makeup are your thing, and your idea of a good time is trying to get into Fashion Week show, check into the Grand Budapest Hotel sometime. If they’re not, skip the visit.

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Two segments in, and let’s have a quick assessment of Neil Patrick Harris’s performance so far.

It’s... OK. I think I might have been expecting more from him. He’s certainly capable of much more playfulness. I think the Oscars might be suffocating him. Let’s hope that whole “briefcase in a box” thing pays off later, which it won’t.

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With edgy American Sniper jokes, an instant addressing of the race arguments, and Jack Black capering like a bear, it’s the opening dance number:

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NPH backlash has begun. Chief whipper: Piers Morgan

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Another very well-judged prize: the hair and styling in The Grand Budapest Hotel are part of the beautifully conceived extraneous touches in this film which are such a vital part of its texture.

Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier hold their Oscars for Makeup and Hairstyling for the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier hold their Oscars for Makeup and Hairstyling for the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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I’d be extremely happy if The Grand Budapest Hotel won all the Oscars this year. Having said that, I’ve just remembered that it can’t because Whiplash has already won one. Is it too late to steal it back from JK Simmons? We could distract him by mucking around with his hat or something. Look, I haven’t thought this through.

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WIN! Best makeup and hairstyling: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Win two! Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier step up.

An Oscar for the costumes in The Grand Budapest Hotel is simple justice. They were as elegant, eccentric and crafted as everything else in that extraordinary production design. In no other film were the costumes were such a fit with the general art direction and vision. Wonderful stuff.

Costume designer Milena Canonero accepts the award for The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Costume designer Milena Canonero accepts the award for The Grand Budapest Hotel. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Next up, Jennifer Lopez and Chris Pine. Pine frankly could have had a shave for tonight, but at least he got through his speech without making a horrific reference to J-Lo’s boobs. This is progress.

Jennifer Lopez and Chris Pine.
Jennifer Lopez and Chris Pine. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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WIN! Best costume design: The Grand Budapest Hotel

The bellboy caps have it. Milena Canonero steps up to the stage.

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NPH is trying to win over the black crowd, but is it backfiring? First, he calls out Oprah for being as big as American Sniper’s profits. Next, he asks Octavia Spencer to leave the theater and watch his prediction box, admonishing her not to eat any snacks! You get the feeling watching both sisters’ faces they didn’t see those barbs coming.

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So we're very much in the main event now

Thanks to the fashion team for their skewering of Kerry Washington’s bridesmaid dress, amongst other things. We’re now deep into the ceremony, having endured Maroon 5. Next up: costume design.

American Sniper gags not going down well.

Take a minute to celebrate JK’s win by finding out if he’d scream at you for DRAGGING! Or RUSHING! by playing our Whiplash game

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Oh dear God. Maroon 5 are performing a song now. Nobody warned me that this would happen. I could be in bed now. I have a nice bed. It’s a comfortable bed. But, oh no, instead I’m watching a bloke dressed as a waiter busk at millionaires. My life is the worst.

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Fashion team: stand down

That’s it from the frock front line. But as we the fashion desk flounce off, catch up with every dress so far in our hits and misses gallery.

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BINGO! Musical performance aimed at the young people

And their mums to be fair.

Adam Levine of Maroon 5 performs ‘Lost Stars’.
Adam Levine of Maroon 5 performs ‘Lost Stars’. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Liam Neeson is onstage. For a moment it seems as if the Academy has created a new category just for films that have posters where Liam Neeson holds a gun of some description (because there must have been about 20 of them this year alone). But, alas, he’s just introducing a couple of best picture contenders.

Liam Neeson.
Liam Neeson. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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Watching the rushing vs dragging clip yet again before Simmons came up reminded me of that extraordinary “close-up” acting he was doing. Shoving his face right into Miles Teller’s — and right into the camera. That brutal craggy face, weirdly reminding me of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.

Oh, this is a nice little gimmick. Neil Patrick Harris has made his own Oscar predictions, and he’s put them in a briefcase, and he’s put the briefcase in a box. And then something else that I might have missed. But, hey, a briefcase in a box. It’s already better than anything MacFarlane did.

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BINGO! A white person winning something

There may be more.

In his speech, Simmons thanks his children. Which I’ve never been a huge fan of, because it essentially means that he’s congratulating his own genitals.

In a sentence, his acceptance speech is “talk to your parents more”.

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First award to be handed out is the JK Simmons Foregone Conclusion Award. It is won by JK Simmons, who has very publicly snubbed the hat he was wearing earlier. Note to self: write an extended thinkpiece about the Academy’s lifelong bias against natty headgear.

J.K. Simmons receives the Oscar for actor in a supporting actor.
J.K. Simmons receives the Oscar for actor in a supporting actor. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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WIN! Best supporting actor: JK Simmons

The Whiplash actor completes his awards season streak, for his performance as monstrous music teacher. Read more here.

“I am grateful every day for the most remarkable person I know – my wife, Michelle Schumacher. I’m grateful for your love, your kindness, your wisdom, your sacrifice and your patience,” he says. “And if I may, call your mom, call your dad. If you’re lucky to have a person alive on this planet, call them. Listen to them, talk to them, for as long as they want to talk to you. Thank you, Mom and Dad.”

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Tonight, according to NPH, is dedicated to the people who paid to see the films that reminded them to be brave in the face of danger. I paid to see the last Hobbit film. It mainly reminded me that a cinema is no place to take a nap.

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Well, that opening number was slick, buttery, very showtuney and Broadway-ish. For me it was also weirdly humourless and self-important, and the Jack Black intervention highly self-conscious. It’s one of those Oscar night events that must play well superbly well in the room, but on the small screen already looks cheesy, especially Neil assuming the form of the statuette itself.

Neil Patrick Harris opens the show.
Neil Patrick Harris opens the show. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

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Here’s the amazing thing about Neil Patrick Harris. He is the American superstar – for gays, for straights … and with honoring Hollywood’s “best and whitest”, he’s making a play for the handful of non-white people in the hall.

I grew up with NPH as Doogie Howser as the American genius next door. To see him singing and dancing (much better than Billy Crystal ever did, truth be told) as an openly gay musical man is sort of something else. As a tall, blond leading man – right now re-enacting the Cinderella story yet again! – it’s not so surprising.

The Sondheim speed of these lyrics, and the fluidity of the opening number, makes the Billy Crystal numbers of my youth seem crude. But more crude is starting off with box office immediately, that the films have made $600 million, more than half from American Sniper alone.

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Oh, wait, now Jack Black’s jumped onstage. He’s playing the Mr Potter to NPH’s James Stewart, grouching about the dire state of the movie industry. This looks to be the tone of the entire show - it’s going to be slyly self-referential, and quick to criticise itself before anyone else can. Which means it’s going to be a really difficult ceremony to liveblog, so good luck reading along.

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Meryl Streep.
Meryl Streep. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Is this a curtsy Meryl? What you up to with your serious skirt suit and your red carpet lols, eh?

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BINGO! Fifty Shades gags

Courtesy of Jack Black!

Here’s Neil Patrick Harris, popping out of the ground like a geriatric Spice Girl. He’s surrounded by what appears to be several hundred Oscars that have been lynched.

Inevitably, he’s immediately singing a huge song and dance number. Imagine Frozen, if Frozen was about the better-than-anticipated box office gross of Good Will Hunting.

More from David Cox:

AMPAS members are 94% white, 77% male and 86% over 50, according to the LA Times. Here at the AMPAS UK party in London’s Soho House, on the other hand, we’re delightfully diverse, barely legal age-wise, totally gender-balanced and unbelievably hot (in both senses).

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BINGO! Reference to Oscar voters’ racial bias

NPH gets in there early; second line of the monologue.

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Keira Knightley.
Keira Knightley. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Keira in a Valentino dress or Kate Greenaway fairy? You decide.

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There is something very strange about watching Taya Kyle, widow of Chris Kyle, (the basis of American Sniper) wearing a green designer gown and walking down the red carpet towards the Oscars. “What your husband did,” ABC’s Robin Roberts says to her, “they don’t do it for this” glory – nor for the $330 million the film has made at the box office. Roberts is here as a fluff entertainment reporter, but she’s still a reporter – and so it’s weird hearing her so effusively thank the widow of a sniper who killed so many people in a war based on a lie.

It’s also queer watching the widow Kyle having a “Cinderella” moment, as she described it, the same week the trial takes place about how her sniper husband was himself allegedly murdered by an Iraq War vet. (Speaking of which, I keep seeing ads for a new Disney live-action Cinderella movie. Hasn’t Hollywood told the Cinderella story enough yet?)

Bradley Cooper follows Kyle in to the Dolby Theater saying they wanted to tell a “truthful story,” and American Sniper wasn’t especially truthful. But American Sniper wasn’t ever scrutinized like Selma was about being “truthful.” It is, however, a film which has registered mightily at the American box office. Often, Hollywood is in tune with liberal America, but at odds with conservative America. American Sniper, with six nominations and the biggest January box office opening in history, walks the line between “blue” and “red” America, and is trying to work both without offending either.

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Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Aniston Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

There have been at least 50 shades of beige on the red carpet tonight. Here’s another. Yawn.

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ABC’s host, oblivious to the actor’s 19 NOMINATIONS, said of Meryl Streep: “You never know who you’re going to see inside here!” Cue mirth:

Lady Gaga’s baking gloves are the new Jared Leto’s big umbrella which was the new JK Simmons’ hat.

More awards. This time, it’s for most unlikely couple clutching on the red carpet.

At number three:

At number two:

But the winner by a country mile:

Emma Stone.
Emma Stone. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Not everyone would be able to make a chartreuse split dress sing, but Stone can. Respect.

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Jared Leto.
Jared Leto. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Come on fashion houses, someone claim Jared’s lilac tux because it’s amazing. Love the way his shoes look like wellies, love the way he’s working the umbrella inside.

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Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

The Alaia dress is all kinds of weird but all eyes are on the gloves. Gaga’s not the first to wear them on the red carpet this season (see: Amal Clooney, the Golden Globes) but she is unique in her adoption of blood red gauntlets. Quite Gareth Pugh. Very menacing. HM

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Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

One green bottle, here. This Versace dress is such an unusual colour that it needs no adornment. The emerald city necklace just ruins things.

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And we have our first winner. The award for best red carpet sashay goes, inevitably, to Oprah.

Ellar Coltrane, aged six, in Boyhood.
Ellar Coltrane, aged six, in Boyhood, Peter Bradshaw’s tip for the top. Photograph: AP

Peter Bradshaw has joined the party. And he thinks it’s - finally - time The Hangover 3 got some recognition from the Academy (sort of) ...

So here we are. This is my first experience liveblogging the Oscars. I’m assured that watching it on TV, reading tweets, and liveblogs and watching Vines not only intensifies your enjoyment of the event — but does wonders for your concentration and long-term memory. Anyway, however fatuous this sounds (ahem!) I am excited about this Oscars, because I think there are some genuinely outstanding movies — Boyhood, Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Theory Of Everything — which are in line to get awards. But also there is the very real possibility that Bradley Cooper and American Sniper will get something too. Which is a bit like The Hangover 3 winning a lot of Academy Awards. Anyway, here goes.

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Readers around the world: is Neil Patrick Harris doing little region-specific stings in your country too? In the UK, we’re getting “This is Neil Patrick Harris and you’re watching exclusively on Sky” followed by a wry little half-smile. The Oscars broadcasts in 200 countries. Did he do the same half-smile for all of them? I’m asking because I’m worried about how sore his poor little face must have got.

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Nicole Kidman.
Nicole Kidman. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Cloudy lemonade sequin dress plus shiny tomato ketchup belt plus Louis Vuitton mini trunk clutch. Sounds wrong but looks brilliant.

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Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lopez Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Things looking tense in J-Lo’s camp. According to Twitter, Jennifer Lopez and Robert Duvall’s wife are wearing the same dress – or a very similar one, at least. Both are Elie Saab and somebody in the Lopez entourage is getting fired in the morning.

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Jared Leto’s giant umbrella could be the new JK Simmons’ hat.

Let us use a compare-and-contrast to gauge the wonder of John Travolta’s pelt.

Before:

John Travolta
Photograph: Reddit

After:

He is of course here to present an award, perhaps to the wickedly talented Broodley Caper, Jeenieanne Moire or Banderstrict Cumumumbersatchel.

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Sixteen minutes to go before the ceremony begins. And then about 12 hours before it ends. And then about three more hours before we can all start speculating about who’ll win next year. FUN.

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Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Huge shoulder flower + baby pink = saccharine sweet and bridesmaidsy

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Solange Knowles.
Solange Knowles. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Wow Solange is doing a poloneck gown. This is major. Every single catwalk show in New York and London has featured about a zillion polonecks and now here they are cropping up on the red carpet. I’ll be honest, the catwalk to red carpet manoeuvre is clunky. Shame.

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The LEGO group have tweeted a picture of their take on tonight’s all-powerful idol. This kit is available NOW for only $19.99. #everythingisprofitable

More gold from Seacrest: the fact he talked to Naomi Watts about the frittata that she made this morning.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Sophie Hunter.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Sophie Hunter. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

It’s unusual for newlywed chic but we like it. It’s also kind of amazing to be able to reference the Versace Hurley pin dress and wear a chic flowing maternity dress at the same time. I think that’s a wardrobe first.

Updated

30 minutes til showtime

Refresh your glasses, nip to the loo and print out your bingo card. This is not a drill.

The frock fightback continues. Leading the troops: Reese Witherspoon

Hadley’s in!

Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Would be into this sleek Tom Ford number if it wasn’t off the shoulder. Looks as though she won’t be able to lift her arms up tonight. Surely a bit annoying?

Updated

John Legend and wife Chrissy Teigen had the big social lols of the Golden Globes, with Chrissy’s bummed-out “cryface” when John Legend won for his song Glory:

Flush with social media adulation, the pair are now trying to own the Oscars with their beautiful, beautiful faces.

Updated

Alexa Chung is genuinely tearing herself apart in the most compelling way on this Sky pre-show programme. She’s being paid to be mean about the red carpet dresses but, before she says anything mean, she keeps reiterating how cruel it is for people to be mean about red carpet dresses. It’s a perfect picture of self-loathing. It’s like watching Good Gollum arguing with Bad Gollum. She’s got about 35 minutes to split in two and start physically fighting with herself.

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The red carpet isn’t just for fripperies:

Glenn Greenwald: “I think we assume that we’re being surveilled by multiple governments around the world, it would be pretty shocking if we weren’t.”

Julianne Moore: “Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death.”

Anna Wintour.
Anna Wintour. Photograph: Jeff Vespa/WireImage

Is she channelling Joan Didion in the Celine campaign by accident or on purpose with the long pendant? Fabulous either way tbh. Also, you can tell she’s a wardrobe pro because she’s wearing a coat on the red carpet in the way that most wouldn’t dare to. Suitably icy, un-PC and on brand. Can she not win something for this?

Updated

We’re doing a big irresistible “awwwww” at this from Reese Witherspoon and her ma:

Hold tight for her red carpet entrance coming up shortly!

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Rita Ora.
Rita Ora. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Is she clapping because her platinum hair works so well with her navy dress? Or is she miming being a mermaid? Dunno but despite the lovely colour the shape is way off the mark. Fishtail in 2015? Please.

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In which Naomi Watts is carpet-blocked …

Steven Thrasher joins the fray. He’s got a thing or two to say about race and the race:

So I may be one of the only gay men in America (the only gay man in America?) liveblogging about the Oscars who doesn’t care one wit about fashion, I’ll take this moment to write about at a few of the social things we’ll be looking at for the Oscars tonight.

Race, obviously is a big thing we’ll be watching for. Black stories are dominating television right now – Empire, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, Black-ish are all hot TV shows right now – but the footing for black stories in feature films is a lot more spotty. Last year, 12 Years A Slave did well, although it was the kind of film which rewards black actors for playing subservient roles, as I wrote about earlier this week. Selma is here for best picture, without its director Ava DuVernay or star David Oyelowo up for awards.

So 2015 is being compared to to 2014 in how much the overwhelming white Academy does or does not acknowledge the efforts of black entertainers. But I think it’s actually better to think back to 2001 when thinking about “the whiteness of Oscar night”, as sociologist Matthew Hughey puts it. That was the year Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won acting Oscars (while Whoopi Goldberg was hosting), predicting a wave of black cinema. It was also the same year when I was at a tiny viewing party and a white, self-identified liberal film critic said after their wins: “It’s turning into a real niggers’ night!”

Some 14 years later, with Selma as the underdog tonight, Spike Lee making films for Vimeo, and the overall lack of diversity in Tinseltown for people in positions in power, I am not sure how much has changed.

Updated

To be perfectly honest with you, tonight I’m only interested in Neil Patrick Harris. Sure, I’ve said it before - back when Chris Rock and Jon Stewart and Anne Hathaway hosted - but this year I’m convinced that the Academy has actually stumbled on a potential lifer. He’ll almost certainly be better than Seth MacFarlane and Ellen DeGeneres, because he almost definitely won’t shriek about boobs or turn the entire show into an orgy of smartphone product placement.

In fact, his only real competition tonight is himself. After all, let’s not forget that when he hosted the Tonys two years ago, this happened:

That’s the kind of spectacle that people are expecting of him tonight. On the other hand, he might just go ‘Hey, there was a film called The Imitation Game’ and use it as an excuse to launch into a 45-minute impression of Jack Nicholson. If that happens, I’m going to resign from this liveblog on the spot.

Updated

Ethan Hawke.
Ethan Hawke. Photograph: Ethan Miller/WireImage

Confident men use their expression as an accessory. Ethan Hawke is accessorising his tux with a slight upcurve of the left side of his lip and a visible “number 11” frown (as it is known the Botox business.)

Updated

Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett. Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

Cate Blanchett’s necklace looks as though she bought it on holiday and thus shouldn’t work on the red carpet but it does. Because she is a pro. That dress – with the unfinished-looking hem on the sleeves – is Margiela.

Updated

Adam Gabbatt here, holed up in the Videology bar (“packed”), watching the red carpet hoo-hah with people who are more interested in ogling each other ...

“Usually I know which film is going to win,” 24-year-old Joseph Spinelli tells me. This year I have no idea.”

When pressed, he named Whiplash as his personal film of the year. “It’s one of the most intense films I’ve ever seen.”

“Write Imitation Game down,” said Lavinia Aparaschivei, leaning over and jabbing a finger at my notepad.

Aparaschivei and Spinelli live in the same building and decided to venture out to together. They are NOT boyfriend and girlfriend, I can confirm, having confused them as such. “He’s dating,” Aparaschivei said. Somewhat ruefully.

Updated

On the red carpet, Michael Keaton just said “I think about things all the time”, and now I’m worried that this unabashed intellectualism might have wrecked his chances of a win.

Updated

BINGO! Meryl Streep

Find your full bingo card here.

Kerry Washington.
Kerry Washington. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

No no no Kerry. This is bad. This is way too deep into wedding territory. Specifically it’s the dress that a grown-up bridesmaid wears to the wedding of her college roommate somewhere in middle America. Also, what’s with the clutch bag cum hip flask? Is she expecting the ceremony to be really dull? IF

Updated

As we’ve just noted over here, this tweet from Aaron Fullerton has #brokentheinternet, at least in terms of pre-Oscar bantz:

Updated

JK Simmons is wearing a hat!

J.K. Simmons
JK Simmons. Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

It’s like that time Björk wore a swan only a lot less exciting.

Updated

Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Julianne Moore and Chanel should be a dream combination but this is not great. The colour is a wash out, the rows of flowers photograph like squashed flies. Shame.

Updated

Our roving reporter David Cox, at the official London Oscars party, delivers his first despatch

I’m reporting live for the Guardian from the UK’s Ampas Oscars party in London’s supercool Soho House. That’s not Ampas the manufacturer of plastic car parts but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose 6,000 members form the Oscars electorate. Most are American but distinguished overseas film-makers can be invited to join. On Oscars night UK members come here. And very glamorous we all are. Currently the mood is one of rowdy, noisy and champers-sozzled anticipation.

Updated

Sienna Miller.
Sienna Miller. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

This Oscar de la Renta dress is pretty lovely with its high apron neckline, but you know I am so distracted by Sienna’s hair and make-up that I can’t concentrate on dissecting it. She’s practically contoured her face and she’s turned her back on that side parted messy bob thing that’s she’s just made her own. Confusing.

Updated

Watch out NPH, Pike’s gonna go Gone Girl:

Updated

Lupita Nyong’o
Lupita Nyong’o. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Here’s Lupita doing the solar plexus flash flash in a pearly queen of a creation by Calvin Klein. Classy.

Updated

This is how much it’s raining at the Oscars. In Los Angeles.

So much so that the roof has literally fallen in on this year’s Oscars. And still got an hour til the ceremony.

Apparently all the Brits are apologising for the weather. Copiously.

Updated

What's Seacrest saying?

E! red carpet host Ryan Seacrest interviewed David Oyelowo and while he asked him about the impact of Selma, he didn’t probe the business of his perceived snub in the best actor category, which felt perhaps polite but more just plain odd.

Seacrest also told Michael Keaton he was surprised to learn – from his copious research – that he’d never been nominated for an Oscar before. “Me too,” the Birdman-type replied. “I’m shocked!”Keaton also added that he thinks there’s way more hype around the Oscars now than 10 or 15 years ago.

Marion Cotillard was meanwhile polite to America, saying: “American directors gave me the desire to be an actor ... but I never thought I’d be part of this American family of cinema one day.”

Meanwhile, Eddie Redmayne turned weather reporter from the covered red carpet: “Outside it’s raining ... which feels beautifully British.”

Also, one rumour: that Lady Gaga’s promised performance tonight is going to comprise a 50th anniversary tribute to The Sound of Music. Hills alive!

Updated

Eddie Redmayne’s in the house

Eddie Redmayne
Eddie Redmayne. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Midnight blue and black and creases that seem dangerously sharp. This is the suit of a winner. The whole adjusting-my-sleeves-as-I-pose thing is a little hackneyed. But he looks so damn sleek that it hardly matters.

Updated

And now, as the final batch of people in important clothes think about not talking about their important clothes to people in less important clothes, it’s time to start thinking about the actual Oscars themselves.

I’m here, ready and able and so tired that I can literally see through time. Seated next to me, much more excitingly, is Peter Bradshaw. Together we’re going to tag team all three billion hours of this accursed ceremony into dust. But first, apparently JK Simmons is wearing a hat tonight. Of course, that must take priority.

Updated

Naomi Watts.
Naomi Watts Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Naomi Watts looks a bit scaly, here, in an Armani frock with built in crop top and hair that looks as though it has been gently tousled by a sea breeze. Athleisure meets mermaid.

Updated

Rosamund Pike.
Rosamund Pike. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

*Air punch* we’ve got a trend now haven’t we? Red for the red carpet: groundbreaking!!! But Rosamund Pike looks good in that “I’m wearing a bouquet of red roses way” does she? And that neckline is suitably haughty.

Updated

Felicity Jones
Felicity Jones Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Felicity Jones has excellent posture and a terrific fringe but what’s with the gargantuan frocks on the red carpet? She’s been swamped by some of the world’s best designers on a weekly basis since January, and she is again tonight in Alexander McQueen. Somebody, give the girl a jumpsuit.

Updated

David Oyelowo.
David Oyelowo. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Kinda not feeling the claret tux and shiny red waistcoat but there is stuff to like here. Mainly the fact that David Oyelowo has struck out against the monochrome menswear tyranny that dominates the Oscars.

Updated

Welcome to the Thunderdome. These guys are going to crank into analysis-spewing action come half-midnight.

Michael Keaton
Michael Keaton Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

You would think Michael Keaton would be comfortable in his tux at this point in awards season, but here he looks tense, as though the coat hanger is still in the jacket.

Updated

Marion Cotillard.
Marion Cotillard. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Another style winner. Ooh we’ve hit a good wardrobe stretch. Marion Cotillard has gone for Dior and that under bum strap is dangerously cool. It’s an odd detail when you write it down but it totally confers the desired amount of elegance.

Updated

Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Like this. Part Morticia Addams, part country club, but mainly a cleverly chosen flattering frock that complements her daughter Dakota Johnson’s similarly form-fitting outfit.

Updated

Laura Dern.
Laura Dern. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

How heavy does this Alberta Ferretti dress look? She’ll be breaking out in a sweat before she sits down in the theatre.

Updated

Hadley’s got the skinny on all the presenters and performances. Jack Black is guesting with Anna Kendrick. Set phasers to WACKY.

Also: “Adam Levine with Maroon 5”? Is Levine going full-on James Brown with the rest of his band?

Updated

First unequivocally great dress of the night

Dakota Johnson.
Dakota Johnson. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

We’re hearing that Dakota is in Saint Laurent. And it’s a magnificent choice. The split is laser sharp and even though it appears to be held up with a silver rope thing, you just know that the dress will stay put. The soft up do was the right choice too. BOOM.

Updated

Carmen Ejogo
Carmen Ejogo. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Selma’s Carmen Ejogo looks v. modern in spaghetti straps, shimmer and not a hint of cliched red carpet corset. Also sporting fashion’s favourite haircut this month, the wavy bob. Nice.

Updated

Margot Robbie.
Margot Robbie. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Margot Robbie sounds the klaxon for the first deep v neck of the night. The dress is a bit droopy and if we’re being picky that necklace should be a couple of inches longer, but frankly this woman could inject some sass into a dishcloth.

Updated

Wolfgang Puck’s seemingly just nipped by a drive-thru for the biggest panic order ever:

This parish’s Hadley Freeman has gone straight to shameless, has not passed go:

Lorelei Linklater.
Lorelei Linklater. Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

Loving the sulky teen stance Lorelei. We can’t decide what the Japanese plant is but at least it’s growing in the right places.

Updated

will.i.am
Will.i.am Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

First trend of the night: a stripe down the leg, seen here and on Neil Patrick Harris. In all other ways, though, Will.i.am is a sartorial wild card, opting for train conductor’s hat, pyjama top and inexplicably rolled up trousers. Yes.

Neil Patrick Harris is in the building

And here’s your host...

Neil Patrick Harris
Neil Patrick Harris Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

... Neil Patrick Harris! In a pleasingly grey suit that recalls Farrow & Ball’s Elephant’s Breath and is similarly soothing. (That’s his husband, David Burtka, on the left.)

Meanwhile last year’s host is popping open the Kettle Chips:

Updated

If you think we’ve been a little negative so far about this year’s red carpet, then here’s why. The bar is set pretty high guys.

Josh Hutcherson
Josh Hutcherson Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

At first glance this is simply man in a suit on the red carpet. The bumfluff is a bit worrying, but extra points for the fiercest smize I’ve ever seen in my life.

Updated

Musicians Teagan and Sara
Musicians Tegan and Sara. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/REUTERS

Goth twins. They’ve practised this double scowl in the changing rooms of Topshop haven’t they? Quite like the sheer tights though, and if they stand next to Kelly Osbourne we’ve almost got a trend.

Updated

Agata Trzebuchowska
Agata Trzebuchowska Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

Agata Trzebuchowska made nun’s habits chic in Ida and continues the covered-up theme here in navy blue. A little too modest, perhaps, for her big red carpet moment, but enjoying her very Natalie Massenet headband.

Updated

Hadley Freeman is going to actually be in the actual room where Oscars are being handed out. She emerges through some dry ice, digitally speaking:

Anna Kendrick
Anna Kendrick Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

Hmm. Maybe it’s the drape, or the raspberry babyfood shade of pink. Or the diamond earrings paired with slightly stiff hairdo. In any case, this look is way too blah for Anna Kendrick.

Updated

HOLLYWOOD, CA - FEBRUARY 22: Actress Patricia Arquette attends the 87th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center on February 22, 2015 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
Patricia Arquette. Photograph: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

The awesome Patricia Arquette doesn’t look quite as magnificent as she can in this monochrome dress. Top is a bit too bandage-y for my liking. In other news she brushed off the Mani-Cam and talked about ecological sanitation instead. We don’t have a thumbs up emoji on the liveblog, but if we did we’d insert one here.

Updated

America Ferrera
America Ferrera Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

America Ferrera wearing a sea green chiffon number by the Duchess of Cambridge’s favourite designer, Jenny Packham. Lovely now but looks as though there could be underslip issues later in the night. Let’s hope not.

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First frock up....

Kelly Osbourne attending the 87th Annual Academy Awards held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, USA.
Kelly Osbourne attending the 87th Annual Academy Awards held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, USA. Photograph: Rollins-AA15/AFF/EMPICS Entertainment

...and it’s Kelly Osbourne in something gothic she’s borrowed from her mum. But who cares what she’s wearing - it’s the lilac walnut whip hairdo and the rainbow crystal clutch that she wants us to look at. We’re averting our eyes. Next!

Updated

The film to fashion baton is passed!

Oscar
An Oscar statue is seen behind a plastic rain tent. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/REUTERS

BREAKING: It’s raining! More details here.

And over to the fashion team …

Updated

Incidentally, we have covered the Oscars a little bit over the past week or so. Here’s some highlights which you might find useful to consult in preparation for the night ahead:

• Our last minute predictions – Andrew Pulver assesses all the key categories
• Peter Bradshaw looks forward to the evening and makes his own predictions – and wishes for the night
• A frighteningly addictive collection of games about this year’s nominees
• A handy guide to how and where you can watch the Oscars round the world
• A copy of our Oscars bingo card: essential for following the action
• A 20-minute Guardian film show live special predicting the winners and running through the snubs

• A primer on new Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris and a sneak preview of the sort of thing we can expect
• Previous Oscar winners on picking up their gongs
• Who should have been nominated?
• Play the diversity quiz!
• Read Steven Thrasher’s two part essay on this year’s nominees, race and patriotism
• Rory Carroll reports on Stephen Fry’s take at pre-Oscars bash the Oscar Wilde awards and takes the temperature in LA
• And the award for best list of alternative awards goes to …
• Full list of nominations
• Read David Cox’s essay on how this year’s nominees embody the new cowardice
• Fancy winning an Oscar? Rebecca Nicholson tells you how

• All white? Here’s why the lack of diversity amongst this year’s nominees is not all right
• A Guardian staffer cheerleads for their favourite best picture nominee in out annual hustings videos
• Twelve enormously comprehensive blogs assessing who will win in each of the key categories
• Does winning best director kill your career? Our interactive team investigated
• How leading foreign language Oscar contenders Ida and Leviathan are stirring things up in their homelands

Updated

Here’s how tonight will work. The next couple of hours will be marshalled by the fashion team, headed up by Hannah Marriott and Imogen Fox, who’ll assess this year’s biggest red carpet looks. Then, as the show approaches, contributions from across the film desk will start whizzing in, while I attempt to make sense of the carnival of glitter and emotions playing out before me. There’s every chance I’ll fall asleep halfway through the ceremony, but at least nobody’s forcing me to get drunk this year.

We’ll have contributions from Guardian chief film critic Peter Bradshaw, as well as Hadley Freeman, who’s at the actual Oscars, Rory Carroll, who’s in the actual press room, columnist Steven Thrasher, David Cox at the official Oscars party in London, Adam Gabbatt watching from the Videology bar in New York and, of course, the whole wide world of Twitter, Instagram and cyberspace.

Please join in by sending us tweets (to @guardianfilm) and comments throughout the night, won’t you? Pizza’s one thing, but knowing that there are other people following the action is something else entirely.

Updated

And so it begins …

We call action on the annual Guardian Oscars liveblog

Welcome, one and all, to The Guardian’s annual Oscars liveblog. Not only do the Oscars mark the biggest night of the year for Hollywood – an hours-long parade of glamour and money and prestige – but it’s also the biggest night of the year for us. Sure, it might seem like business as usual here, with dozens of journalists mutely clacking away at keyboards, but apparently there’s pizza coming later. I’m giddy just thinking about it.

But tonight isn’t just about me getting to eat over a bin in a hurry during an ad break. It’s about the film industry coming together to celebrate the most important work of the last 12 months. Work about talented but misunderstood upper-class British men who really existed in real life. Work about soldiers who kill loads of people and then feel a bit sad about it. Work about Michael Keaton doing a passable Michael Keaton impersonation. Over the coming hours, we’ll discover which of this work has been deemed objectively better than all the other work, and I for one can’t wait.

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