Seeing as how they clocked in at a back-breaking three hours and 34 minutes, you could be forgiven for checking out of the 86th Academy Awards ceremony early (or frankly, passing on it altogether—I mean, how about that episode of True Detective?). But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered; your Flavorwire sat through the whole damn thing, and put together the dozen moments that blew up the Twittersphere, burned down our Oscar parties, and will be on everyone’s tongues for a good, oh, 12 hours tops:
1. Oh, Leto.
Everyone was a little nervous about Jared Leto’s sure-shot win for Dallas Buyers Club, since that meant another Jared Leto acceptance speech, and those haven’t gone so awesome. Luckily, he steered clear of the awkward “Brazilian butt” and waxing schtick, giving a heartfelt tribute to his mom. And then he went on to name-check his band 30 Seconds to Mars and shout-out Ukraine and Venezuela (“I want to to say we are here, and as you struggle to make your dreams happen and live the impossible, we are thinking of you tonight”), and for God’s sake, stop letting this guy write his own material.
2. Everybody Get “Happy”
The night belonged to Lupita Nyong’o, even before her moving acceptance speech, when she popped up out of her seat to dance with Pharrell’s to his Oscar-nominated “Happy.”
And then Amy Adams got in the on the act, because Amy Adams is the best.
But the GIF of the night is this respectable shimmy from Meryl Streep.
3. Kim Novak
Our own Tyler Coates may have said it best:
4. NBC’s Twitter flub
Oh dear.
5. Darlene Love
The inimitable Ms. Love was one of the subjects of Best Documentary Feature winner 20 Feet From Stardom, and guess what: when Ms. Love takes the mic and starts to roar it up a capella, there’s not an orchestra in the world that’s gonna cut her off.
6. Amy Adams takes a phone break
If you found yourself checking your email and scrolling through Twitter during the lengthy show, you weren’t the only one–though most of us weren’t updating our Facebook status while Tyler Perry was talking about our movies.
7. Ellen’s selfie
Though though pizza-party bit was stretched, one might charitably say, rather thin, Ellen Degeneres was a capable and often inspired host. Her best moment of the night: announcing that she was going to tweet a selfie of herself and Meryl Streep in the hopes of breaking the all-time retweet record. That lofty goal established, nearby celebs Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Bradley Cooper and Lupita Nyong’o (though, alas, not Liza Minelli) crowded in, creating an epic Oscar selfie that not only briefly crashed twitter, but broke the previous RT record (for Barack Obama’s re-election tweet) in just over a half hour. (It was also all a big Samsung plug, but hey, it’s not like the night’s not a big commercial anyway).
8. Lupita Nyong’o wins Best Supporting Actress—and the night.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you give an acceptance speech.
9. Montages!
Look, we love a nice montage of classic movies as much as the next film buff. But the evening’s clip reels were maddeningly vague—Heroes! Cartoons! True-ish stuff!—and goofily random, feeling less like the stuff of a world-wide broadcast and more some cool stuff some dude put together for YouTube from his DVD library. They made a long show even longer (and prevented us from seeing, say, the full acceptance speeches that teary Steve Martin and Angela Lansbury gave for their lifetime achievement awards).
10. The Great “Let It Go” Debacle of 2014
Hew, Lord. Where to start? First, this happened:
And then this:
But then there was this, the cutest acceptance speech of the night, so maybe it all turned out okay:
11. All right, all right, all right.
Well, when you give an Oscar to Matthew McConaughey, you’re gonna get a Matthew McConaughey acceptance speech, and you gotta give him this: he was at his absolute Matthew McConaughey-est. The biggest head-scratcher of his rambling speech? It’s a tough competition, but we’re gonna go with “[God]’s shown me that it’s a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates.”
12. Steve McQueen jumps for joy
It’s not often that the best picture of the year wins the Academy Award for Best Picture of the Year, so we’re very happy about 12 Years a Slave taking home the big prize. You know who’s even happier? Director Steve McQueen: