Hello pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to a very special edition of the Empire Podcast,

special as in… we're recording this straight after staying up all night to watch and

live vlog the Oscars and we're very tired and liquid hearing and this could be the worst

idea in the history of bad ideas. So anyway, here I am, joined by James Dyer and Phil

DeSemilien to talk through the night's events. So, I'm going to start with the awards

themselves. Very even spread this year with Argo winning Best Picture and Life of Pi winning

most with four, although you might say some in the minor categories, if there are minor

categories. So what do we make of the show? It didn't feel like to me that there were any

big surprises. Not one really curveball winner. I thought that I was pleasantly surprised

by Quentin Tarantino winning for a Django Unchained. Even though he won at the BAFTA's, but I just

had a feeling that there was so much controversy in the States over certain factors in Django

Unchained, the n-word controversy, mainly. I didn't think he was going to get it this

time, but it was a fairly even group, I would have said, the best original screenplay,

but I was still very pleasantly surprised because I thought Django Unchained was fantastic

that he won. But let's start with the big one. Let's start with the Best Picture, which

was won by Argo, and I don't think anyone was massively surprised by that one. No, no,

really. No, it seemed like everybody kind of knew and that was sort of a foregone conclusion.

But I suppose Argo came out at a long time ahead of some of the other, Lincoln, especially,

without prior to Christmas. Well, it was a front, which is never normally the best time

to release an Oscar film. It was a front runner, and then it ceded

momentum to the likes of Syrodark 30, and Lincoln, and Laymas Robb, or Laymas Robb, as

I believe is actually... Laymas Robb, and then weirdly, it started to get the momentum

...