All the news from the 2015 Oscars

After a long and controversy-plagued campaign season, director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) came out on top as the best picture among the 10 nominees in this year’s Academy Awards. Beating out fellow front-runners Boyhood, American Sniper, The Imitation Game, and The Theory of Everything, Birdman marks Iñárritu’s first Best Picture win (he was nominated in 2007 for Best Picture and Director for Babel.) He also won the award for Best Director earlier in the evening.

Iñárritu took time at the end of his acceptance speech to dedicate his film to his fellow Mexican nationals and make a general plea for equal treatment of Mexican immigrants.

You might have missed this, but Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was a part of the Oscars madness tonight. During Cadillac’s commercial during the broadcast, the Woz himself can be seen lounging in his study, listening to music that, for one reason or another, is making the room go out of focus.

The ad’s part of Cadillac’s new and ridiculously named “Dare Greatly” campaign, which also includes appearances from Anne Wojcicki, head of health research company 23andMe, and Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater. The campaign says its stars have risked it all in their lives, but it’s not quite clear what that has to do with cars.

Eddie Redmayne won the award for best actor in a leading role at the 2015 Oscars for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne has long been considered a front-runner to win this award. Much of Redmayne’s performance required him to act with limited mobility as he depicted the progression of Hawking’s disease — something that the Academy was clearly quite impressed by. This is Redmayne’s first nomination and his first win.

Though Redmayne’s performance has been the focus of quite a bit of buzz since before the movie even came out, there were quite a few other great performances that he was up against. Steve Carell’s transformative turn in Foxcatcher was a performance that critics couldn’t stop talking about. Michael Keaton’s performance in Birdman was about as reinvigorating for his career as it was for the character he played. And, you know, everyone loves Benedict Cumberbatch no matter what he does.

Alejandro González Iñárritu is taking home the 2015 Oscar for directing for his film Birdman, a stunning look at fame and a fading star that’s presented as though the entire movie were shot in a single take. Iñárritu’s win is well deserved: Birdman maintains an impressive tension throughout its entire runtime, has amazing performances from all of its stars, and is filmed in a way that’s truly remarkable and unlike anything else.

This is Iñárritu second win at the Oscars. He’s received two nominations in the past — best picture and directing for Babel — and has two other nominations tonight: best picture and original screenplay, which he won.

After a performance that brought the audience to its feet and left some in tears, “Glory,” the soaring track from Selma performed by John Legend and Common, earned the Academy Award for Best Original Song. “Glory” was a shoe-in from the start, even with competition from “Everything Is Awesome.” Tonight’s performance was one we’ve seen a few times by now, but it’s no less powerful here.

During their later acceptance speech, both performers spoke to the ongoing protests against the violence against black youths across the country. “Selma is now because the struggle for justice is right now,” he said. It was a powerful moment, and it might well have been the most moving moment of the entire evening.

At tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony, Laura Poitras’ Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour won the award for Best Documentary Feature. Despite being the odds-on favorite for the award, the field was competitive this year, including Netflix’s critically acclaimed Virunga for the honor.

Citizenfour, which saw wide release last fall, offers an inside look at the first week of the Snowden leaks. Filmmaker Poitras was first contacted by Snowden about the NSA’s surveillance activities in January 2013. By May, she had flown out to Hong Kong to conduct her first on-camera interviews with the whistleblower. Her second set of interviews were done with Glenn Greenwald in Russia later that year. Though plenty was left on the cutting room floor, the movie earned a number of awards on its way to the Oscars, including a BAFTA for Best Documentary.

Patricia Arquette just won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. During her acceptance speech, Arquette hurriedly thanked seemingly dozens of people, including Linklater and the Boyhood cast and crew, then made a call for gender equality in Hollywood.

“It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” she said, before music ushered her out.

Even though fans might still lament The Lego Movie being snubbed for the Best Animated Feature award, Marvel and Disney did happily manage to take home the award for the perfectly enjoyable superhero film Big Hero 6. It’s Marvel’s first major win at the Academy Awards, and Walt Disney Animation Studio’s second since last year’s win for Frozen.

Big Hero 6, which was loosely adapted from the quirky ‘90s comic of the same name, was up against the likes of DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Studio Ghibli’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. The film quietly became a big hit last year, pulling in $219 million at the box office.

It’s probably no surprise that Disney won the Oscar for best animated short film this year, but it’s a win that’s well deserved. Feast is a fun, touching, and gorgeous little movie. You may have seen it playing in front of Big Hero 6, but if you didn’t, it’s available to rent online. YouTube is charging $1.99 for it ($2.99 for HD), and it’s definitely worth the money. Take six minutes and check it out.

During the Oscars broadcast, a new trailer for the next season of House of Cards aired, giving us a closer look at what might just be the breakdown of Frank and Claire’s relationship. Both are in positions of major political power, but, with an election in 2016 on the horizon, the gulf between them has never been more plain. The new season premieres on February 27th.

In the most rousing moment of the entire night so far, Tegan and Sara and the Lonely Island graced the stage at the Oscars to perform “Everything Is Awesome” from The Lego Movie. There were construction workers. There were capes. There was Will Arnett himself as Batman rocking out with Questlove. It made perfect sense, and you will enjoy it because Oprah sure as hell did.

With a host like Neil Patrick Harris, how could you not open the Academy Awards with a musical number? After just one monologue joke about the lack of diversity — “Tonight we honor the best and whitest — I mean brightest” — Mr. Barney Stinson led a large set piece that spanned the history of cinema, incorporating both a gigantic rear projector on stage and a montage of Harris hanging out in other films — like the opening moments from Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. Supporting cast includes Anna Kendrick, Jack Black, stormtroopers, Roman soldiers, and a flask-wielding Benedict Cumberbatch in a non-speaking role.

And of course, when Jack Black pulls out a smartphone, it’s a Samsung.

After many pun-filled hours, the 87th Academy Awards are over, and dozens of golden statues have found new homes. Eddie Redmayne almost did a jig, John Legend and Common left the room with nary a dry eye, Patricia Arquette threw a slice of the political into her speech, and Birdman director Alejandro G. Iñárritu cleaned up. See the complete list of winners, below.

Best picture

The Oscars are happening tonight, and even if you’re still sore about the Lego Movie snub, the event promises to be full of beaming nominees, Boyhood, and Neil Patrick Harris anecdotes. Since we’ve already armed you with everything you need to know before you watch the Oscars this year, now you can get to the business of actually watching.

The Oscars will air tonight starting at 7PM ET. The main event will begin at 8:30PM ET.

Apple just debuted its Oscars ad and unsurprisingly, it’s centered around making movies. The commercial features several groups of high school students as they shoot different projects using the iPad as their camera, overlaid by an inspirational voiceover from Martin Scorsese, who extolls the virtues of hard work and experimentation as the keys to creative success. And while the piece has the kind of delicate score and evocative images that one would expect from an Apple ad, the spot was actually shot on the iPad Air 2 itself.

For the commercial, Apple partnered with the LA County High School for the Arts, a performing and visual arts school located in Los Angeles. Student filmmakers were provided with iPads and shot their projects over a weekend, during which their efforts were documented — also using an iPad Air 2. That behind-the-scenes footage is what makes up the ad.