THOUGHTS ON THE 86th ACADEMY AWARDS, or: TO ELLEN BACK

There have now been an Oscars. To get the grubby part out of the way: I set my personal prediction record, with 21/24 (I always think I got 21 right in 2004, and then I always realise I missed Editing. Also, prior to now, that was the only year I ever got all of the Big 8 right). Not a hugely impressive achievement this particular year - the only legitimate surprise winner was Mr. Hublot for Animated Short, and most of the rest was calling the three 50/50 races in Picture, Original Screenplay, and Editing correctly - but I am pleased. It was enough for me to win in the group I was watching with, by only one (and that one came down to Best Picture itself).

About the awards themselves: being largely in-tune with the Academy is a weird feeling, but there you go: the film to win the most awards was my favorite non-documentary film of 2013, and the Best Picture was in my Top 10. Sometimes, a fella is just on-consensus like that, though I can't recall another time in my life of watching the show where I was so on-board with so many of the awards given out. I get the argument that it's all arbitrary and meaningless, and if you love the movies you love, that's all that matters, but here's the thing: Emmanuel Lubezki and Alfonso Cuarón are now on the cheat-sheet that will get handed out to people hoping for a quick and dirty version of movie history 50 years from now (assuming there are still movies and movie-watchers 50 years from now, but Jesus, let's not go down that path). And that's a great thing. Is it more fun to snark and bitch? Of course it is. But hey! Roger Deakins lost for the eleventh time! So there's still something to be haughty and angry over.

About the ceremony: you know, not that terrible. It helped, I suppose, that I was busy playing Oscar-themed bar trivia and was able to drift away for the tedious parts; but that didn't make the nightmare that was the James Franco/Anne Hathaway ceremony in 2011. Ellen DeGeneres's hosting skills could best be described as "harmless"; her absolute worst joke came early enough in the night ("So much has changed in seven years, when Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio were both nominated", or whatever strained milquetoast nonsense it was), that she had nowhere to go but up, and largely did so.

It also helped that the night was, as a whole, weirdly surreal for the Oscars: between Harrison Ford being the angriest man who ever set foot on the stage of an auditorium and John Travolta mangling Idina Menzel's name -it is not, perhaps, the easiest thing to say, but I genuinely don't know to get from even a generous mispronunciation to the cocktail of syllables he offered up - I pretty much don't want anyone else to ever present at awards shows. Nor, in light of Matthew McConaughey's hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness ramble through fractured chronology and shifting self-awareness, do I want anyone else to ever win an award. For I am easily amused by derangement and confusion.

But for all that, there was a whole clutch of great speeches - Lupita Nyong'o and her bald-faced joy and humility at being on that stage, with the knowledge of history both pressing down and raising her up, was the clear standout (it very well be the best speech in receipt of a competitive Oscar that I have ever watched as it was happening), but there was a lot of heart being felt by a lot of people, and Steve McQueen's post-speech jump in the air was magical - and a set that I liked, I find, much more than the internet did, finding it clever and restrained without being too minimal (because who wants minimal? The show is the very definition of a white elephant). The montages sucked - they always do. The songs, unexpectedly, also sucked - Pharrell Williams's "Happy" was an early burst of energy, but the other three nominees sagged, with Adele Dazeem proving unable to get through "Let It Go" without flatlining on half her high-notes, and U2 making a ponderous song even more soporific. Pink's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was surprisingly pleasant, though, and Bette Midler - far and away the most steady and confident of the Old Workhorses trotted out (the animate corpse of Sidney Poitier and the unconvincing wax marionette puppet of Kim Novak suggest that the time has come to leave the golden age of Hollywood out of the Oscar ceremony) - nailed "Wind Beneath My Wings", a song that I thought had long since run out of its ability to move me at all.

Unusually long though it was, it was the most enjoyment I got from an Oscar ceremony in a lot of years - since the recent high-water mark of the Hugh Jackman Oscars, easily - and not least because I agreed with so many of the winners (of the 20 categories for which I've seen all four nominees, seven went to the film I'd have voted for - an unprecedented number). A good cap to a good year, and now we can settle in and get to the meat of the 2014-that-will be.