The Academy Awards handed out their annual accolades with "12 Years a Slave" winning Best Picture.
The Best Picture Award went to Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Steve McQueen, Jeremy Kleiner, and Anthony Katagas who produced the movie. The film also won Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong'o; it was her first nomination and the movie was also her film debut. The McQueen movie also won Best Adapted Screenplay for John Ridley.
"Gravity" won the most awards at the ceremony with Alfonso Cuaron winning the Best Director award; he became the first Latin American director to win the Oscar for Best Director. The film also swept the technical prizes including Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Cinematography and Editing. The film also surprised in the Best Score category as Steve Price won.
Matthew McConaughey took home his first Academy Award for his work on "Dallas Buyers Club." McConaughey's win came after having won the Golden Globe, the Critics Choice and the Screen Actors Guild Award.
After sweeping the precursor awards Cate Blanchett took home the Oscar for Best Actress for her work in "Blue Jasmine." The award was Blanchett's first Best Actress prize and her second Oscar; she won in 2004 for "The Aviator" in the Best Supporting Actress category.
Jared Leto went home with the Best Supporting Actor award for his role in "Dallas Buyers Club," his first Academy Award. Leto had won the majority of the precursor awards and was expected to win.
Spike Jonze won his first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his film "Her." The movie had already won at the Golden Globe and the Writers Guild of America. Jonze was also nominated for the Best Song and Best Picture category for his film.
The Animated Film award went to Disney's "Frozen." The film had already won the BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice and was the front-runner in the competition. "Frozen" also took home the award for Best Song.
The Best Foreign Film accolade went to Italy's "The Grand Beauty" giving Italy its 11th Academy Award. The country has already been nominated for 28 Oscars.
The Best Documentary award went to "20 Feet From Stardom" beating out the "The Act of Killing," which was the critics' darling and the film that was expected to win.
Catherine Martin took home two Academy Awards for her work in Costume Design and Production Design on "The Great Gatsby." She had previously won both awards for her work on "Moulin Rouge."
"Dallas Buyers Club" also won the Best Makeup award beating out "Bad Grandpa" and "The Lone Ranger."
The highlights of the show included Pharrell Williams' performance of "Happy" for which he was nominated for the Oscar. Karen O. also performed her ballad from "Her," "The Moon Song." U2 also performed their Oscar nominated song "Ordinary Love" from "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" while Idina Menzel performed the song "Let it Go" from "Frozen."
Pink gave a special tribute to "The Wizard of Oz" singing "Somewhere over the Rainbow" while Glen Close presented the In Memoriam tribute followed by a performance by Bette Midler.