Oscars 2019 LIVE: Green Book wins best picture in shock finale

Well, that's it from us. Thanks for following our live coverage of the Oscars, from Melissa Singer's opening salvos in our red carpet coverage right the way through to these parting shots from the telecast itself. It's been … well, I may need a little while to mull it over, to be honest. Let's just say it's been interesting, though not necessarily all that interesting, if you know what I mean.

The choice of Green Book as best picture may have baffled plenty of people, but it's certainly ensured the Oscars will be talked about for a few days yet. And for the organisers, that's surely no bad thing.

Again, thank you for tuning in. We hope you've enjoyed it. And if you haven't quite had your fill, check out this wrap of the event from Michael Idato, who has been backstage at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles throughout.

Let's recap the 2019 Oscar winners:

Best picture: Green Book
Best directing: Alfonso Cuaron (Roma)
Best actor in a leading role: Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Best actress in a leading role: Olivia Colman (The Favourite)
Best actor in a supporting role: Mahershala Ali (Green Book)
Best actress in a supporting role: Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Best original screenplay: Green Book (Nick Vallelonga, Bryan Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly)
Best adapted screenplay: BlacKkKlansman (Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee)
Best foreign language film: Roma (Mexico)
Best animated feature: Spider-Man: Into the Multi-Verse
Best documentary feature: Free Solo
Best live action short film: Skin
Best animated short film: Bao
Best documentary short film: Period. End of Sentence
Best original song: Shallow (Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, Andrew Wyatt) from A Star is Born
Best original score: Black Panther (Ludwig Goransson)
Best cinematography: Alfonso Cuaron (Roma)
Best editing: John Ottman (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Best visual effects: Paul Lambert, Ian Hunter, Tristan Myles, J.D. Schwalm (First Man)
Best production design: Hannah Beachler, Jay Hart (Black Panther)
Best costume design: Ruth E. Carter (Black Panther)
Best makeup and hairstyling: Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe, Patricia Dehaney (Vice)
Best sound editing: John Warhurst, Nina Hartstone (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Best sound mixing: Paul Massey, Tim Cavagin, John Casali (Bohemian Rhapsody)

From left: Oscar winners Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapdosy), Olivia Colman (The Favourite), Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) and Mahershala Ali (Green Book).Credit: EPA

In case you're wondering, the award for best picture is a bit of an anomaly in the Oscars. Every other award is voted for on a first-past-the-post basis: whichever of the five nominees gets most votes wins the prize. But the best picture Oscar is decided via a preferential voting system. That means voters rank their films from best to worst. The films are then ranked according to the number of first preferences they get, and the one with the fewest votes is eliminated and its ballots transferred to other films on the basis of second preferences. Unless one film scores more than 50 per cent of first votes – thus emerging as an outright winner – preferences will come into play.

So it is that if a voter picked Black Panther, say, as best film but it got fewer first votes than anything else, the film would be eliminated, and the voter's ballot would be transferred to whatever film they picked as number two. And so it goes on, under the watchful eyes of PwC, until there's a clear winner. That means a film that divides people might get a lot of first votes but not a lot of second and thirds, while a film that strikes people as so-so could amass enough twos, threes and fours to suddenly emerge from the pack.

Maybe that's what happened with Green Book. Then again, maybe it's just that a surprising number of the Academy's 9200 or so members really liked it. It did win the Producers' Guild of America award for best picture so it clearly has friends in high places. Whatever the case, I'll say this for the 91st Academy Awards: in picking Green Book as the best picture of the year they've ensured that we'll be talking about it for days to come, regardless of a telecast that could only be considered lacklustre. Let the post-mortem begin.

From left: Green Book producers Jim Burke, Charles B. Wessler, Nick Vallelonga, Peter Farrelly and Brian Currie pose with their Oscars after winning the award for best picture.Credit: Invision/AP

Speaking backstage, Lady Gaga said the hardest thing in life was "to be brave enough to be yourself."

The winner for best original song said she hoped the members of the gay community attending the Sydney Mardi Gras feel "a joy inside of them. Bradley [Cooper] said that to me yesterday right before we did our last rehearsal. He said, 'let's just drop a little bit of joy'. I said 'okay', and it turns out joy did a whole lot for me."

Gaga said she was not standing on stage for herself, but rather "we are standing here for all of you. We love making music, we love making art, I love being an actress and tonight, when this Oscar was handed to me, I looked it in its eyes and I saw a lot of pain. I saw all the things I had been through." She also paid tribute to her director and co-star Bradley Cooper. "This song [Shallow] would not be what it is without this film and without Bradley Cooper, without his incredible voice on the record and the incredible way he shot the film."

"I grew up in a world where I never thought I was going to play the lead on [television series] Mr Robot because I never saw somebody in a lead role who looked like me," Rami Malek said backstage. "I never realised I could play Freddie Mercury until I realised his real name was Farrokh Bulsara."

Malek did not address the film's production problems and the dismissal of director Bryan Singer during production. However, he seemed be hinting at those events when he said: "This has been a tough battle, I think you all know about it, and the fact that I am here celebrating with you is proof that a lot of things can be overcome and anything is possible."

The best actor winner, who grew up in America as the child of Egyptian-born immigrants, also said: "The fact that I have this [Oscar] in my hand right now is beyond any expectation that myself or perhaps my family could have ever had. I am celebrating with all of you, and anyone who has a dream."

Speaking backstage, supporting actor winner Mahershala Ali said his role in Green Book demanded more from him that any role previously.

"This was the first time in which there was a good degree of time that I was at work. I was there all day, every day, so to shoulder more responsibility than I had been accustomed to shouldering, to play a character who had different attributes to my own, I had to let certain things go. It was constant negotiation, trying to find my way."

Ali said winning the Oscar was a gift. "To be the one that was chosen is not something I take lightly, it is not something I take for granted," he said. "My life has changed tremendously in two years."

Mahershala Ali accepts the Oscar for best performance by an actor in a supporting role for Green Book.Credit: Invision/AP

Best actress winner Olivia Colman said her Oscar statue was destined for a menage a trois with her husband, Ed Sinclair. Asked where it would be kept, she said: "In bed with me, between me and my husband ... He doesn't know yet. He doesn't mind."

Colman said the experience of surfing The Favourite's success through awards season made no sense to her. "None of it," she said backstag. "It's not an everyday occurrence. I don't know how anyone is composed and remembers anything [on stage]. It is a very weird occurence. I could not tell you what I am feeling. I don't know what to do with myself at the moment."

Spike Lee, the winner of best adapted screenplay for BlacKkKlansman, ran into an awkward exchange with journalists backstage when he was asked to comment on Green Book's best picture win.

"Next question," Lee said. He then added: "I thought I was courtside at [Madison Square] Garden, the ref made a bad call."

Lee also took the opportunity to applaud the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, of which he had been a vocal critic, for shifting the demographics of its membership to be more inclusive. "They opened up the Academy to make the Academy look more like America," Lee said. "That's why three black women won Oscars." Lee also noted US President Donald Trump's failure to call out white terrorism in modern America. "This film, whether we won best picture, will stand the test of time being on the right side of history."

Not everybody enjoys it when the Oscars get political, but for me the most memorable moments almost invariably involve people using their moment to make a point. Either that, or to make a joke – or, occasionally, to make a bit of a fool of themselves (hello Gwyneth Paltrow; we're looking at you, Sally Field).

This time, there was precious little of that. Was that because the Academy – and broadcaster ABC – is desperate to win back middle America, which doesn't much like seeing this slice of fun and glamour hijacked by Hollywood liberals? Or is it because the Hollywood liberals have chalked up some decent wins in recent times and can afford to take the foot off the pedal for a while? My guess is it's a bit of both.

All up, I'd rate it as a pretty flat event, with little to spark outrage and even less to spark excitement. Julia Roberts kind of summed it up as she wrapped things up, looking like she didn't quite know what was going on while also feeling slightly deflated. It was an anticlimax, oddly lacking in a sense of moment or momentousness. As the end credits rolled I kept hoping to see some duffer from PwC come on stage waving an envelope, telling everyone there had been a terrible mistake and Green Book wasn't really the winner. Give it to The Favourite, give it to Roma. Give it to BlacKkKlansman or If Beale Street Could Talk if you want to acknowledge terrific storytelling about the African-American experience – hell, give it to Black Panther even. But Green Book? I just don't get it.

Alfonso Cuaron, winner of the Oscars for best directing, cinematography and foreign film, said he did not watch his movies after finishing them. "I prefer to see other people's movies," he said backstage.

Asked if Roma was a spiritual companion to his 2006 film Children of Men - in terms of both films exploring the issue of bringing new life into a chaotic world - Cuaron said that while he did not "really think too much about my films, I know that thematically and in terms of cinematic approach they have a lot in common."

The 57-year-old director said he was proud to bring the Oscar home to Mexico. "This is a Mexican film, this belongs to Mexico," Cuaron said.