Well, that happened….
In perhaps the biggest Academy Awards mess-up of all time, presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were seemingly given the wrong envelope when it was time to announce Best Picture. Beatty was quite confused at the contents of the envelope and handed the card to Dunaway, who quickly read out La La Land. The producers of the film, which was already the big winner with 6 awards, were in the middle of their speech when it was suddenly announced that Moonlight was the true winner of the Best Picture Oscar. I can definitely say that I haven't seen anything remotely like this in the two decades I have been watching the Academy Awards, with this probably being the biggest mistake in Oscar history,
If anything, this incident has taught us that if the wrong recipient of an Oscar is announced, there are indeed people in the back who will rush out to correct the error. If has often been a rumour that Maria Tomei's 1993 Best Supporting Actress win for My Cousin Vinny was merely the result of presenter Jack Palance reading her name by mistake. Seeing how quickly the Academy responded to La La Land being mistakenly announced as Best Picture, it is now obvious that this was not the case.
So, what do I think about all this? Well, for starters, it did end of affecting my correct prediction tally. If La La Land was truly the Best Picture winner, I would have had 15 out of 24 predictions correct. However, I am going to have to settle for 14 right, which is quickly becoming my average result, since this is the third year in a row I ended up with that tally. A common denominator with all three of those years is me picking the incorrect film for Best Picture, with me always choosing the films I liked better.
Moonlight winning Best Picture capped off an Oscar ceremony that presented awards to many non-white individuals, such as Mahershala Ali winning Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight, Viola Davis winning Best Supporting Actress for Fences, Moonlight winning Best Adapted Screenplay and O.J.: Made in America winning Best Documentary. Even though it lost out on Best Picture, La La Land still won the most Oscars, including Best Director for Damien Chazelle, Best Actress for Emma Stone, Best Score, Best Song, Best Cinematography, and Best Production Design. Rounding out the major winners, Casey Affleck won Best Actor for Manchester by the Sea, with the film also winning Best Original Screenplay.
I have nothing spectacular to say about host Jimmy Kimmel, who sort of known that he was out of his element. Probably the most enjoyable gag Kimmel did was have a group of tourists unknowingly escorted into the ceremony, with their star struck reactions being quite enjoyable to watch. The ceremony also played upon Jimmy Kimmel's “rivalry,” with Matt Damon, which is a recurring gag on Kimmel's talk show. Then there was the candy and cookies falling from the sky.
Well, that ends another year of Oscar coverage.
