Stephen Fry has got gummy

Maybe it's that Amy Poehler and Tina Fey have ruined us for everyone else. Maybe it was because the broadcast didn't start until after the watershed, so we'd expected more bite. But Stephen Fry calling Emma Thompson "a ghastly piece of stinking offal" and describing Captain Phillips as "Saving Mr Hanks" didn't quite seem to cut it like it might have in 2002. There was the odd glimmer of the old wit: slagging off Jeff Pope's grammar, telling us he was so moved by Oprah in The Butler he nearly gave his the afternoon off. But Fry's own suggestion that Steve Coogan should take on the mantle seemed the sanest thing he said all night.

Gravity isn't that good, and people aren't really buying it as British

Most people loved Gravity. But most people also have limits. It wasn't that good, was it? And if it was that good, why did it not win best picture? Although the practicalities of why it's apparently a British production are well-documented (and the shout-outs to Framestore were great), to hear it officially minted as such does stick in the throat a bit. Still: it's reassuringly inclusive, in a way, that the borders of Britishness now extend to outer space.

Slave has definitely lost momentum

There seemed no way, back in September, that it seemed 12 Years a Slave wouldn't dominate the Oscars, taking at least best picture and director, probably script, actor, supporting actor and supporting actress and everything else with it. But if it can't sweep the board here, it surely can't do it anywhere. The only hope is that the US will embrace it as one of their own (it being, after all, technically American).

James Gandolfini was snubbed. Likewise Richard Griffiths

The sad late run on spaces to be filled in the In Memoriam section could not fully explain the exclusion of these two, one of whom actually starred in an awards contender this year. It would have been politic to namecheck Roger Lloyd Pack and Mel Smith, too.

There is now a Jennifer Lawrence backlash

We never thought we'd live to see the day people went off Jennifer Lawrence, but our collective crush has claimed its first casualty: Lupita Nyong'o, officially robbed for best supporting actress. Had Lawrence attended, perhaps the potential damage might have been mitigated. But, for the first time in recorded history, anti-J-Law mutterings were recorded.

Not all surprises are bad

Partly it's because Jared Leto wasn't even nominated (likewise Matthew McConaughey for best actor), but Barkhad Abdi's beating the likes of Michael Fassbender and Matt Damon was one of the better moments of the show. Less because he definitely turned in the superior performance than those two than just for the faint underdog shock. Ditto Will Poulter; it's testimony to his cuteness that - unlike with the supporting actress prize - you didn't feel too bad for Nyong'o.

Foreign language documentaries: ok. Foreign language fiction: not so much

Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing was a worthy best documentary winner; it was also cheeringly nominated for best foreign language film, where it joined the likes of The Great Beauty (which won) and Blue is the Warmest Colour. Shame, then, that the likes of Toni Servillo and Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paolo Sorrentino and Abdellatif Kechiche weren't deemed worthy contenders in the best actor, actress and director categories. (It also explains some of the thinking behind the Guardian Film Awards.)

We're sure she's not actually alcoholic, and we do still find it funny and everything, but we are sort of wondering when Emma Thompson will stop doing her boozy routine

Again: it's great. It's just that at some point it might just get a bit too convincing - she is a pretty good actor, after all.

No-one can take that best actress Oscar from Cate Blanchett

We're still in the wake of Woodygate. And we were on Dame Judi's home turf. But Blanchett still won the best actress Bafta. She also aced her speech: decrying celebrity, dedicating it to Philip Seymour Hoffman, and pretending she was unfit. This is now what's called an Oscars lock.

Helen Mirren: trooper

For someone not yet 70, Helen Mirren has racked up a fair shelf of lifetime achievement awards. She didn't twerk this time, nor declare herself a "fucking whore" and proud of it, but she still classed up last night's ceremony by asking the audience to thank their teachers then quoting what felt like the whole of the Tempest, but actually only this:

Be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air.
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself – 
Yea, all which it inherit – shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

• Peter Bradshaw's take
• What did you think?