When one looks back at the 89th Academy Awards
they will always remember the Best Picture goof up. Warren Beatty came up on
stage to explain the error and had Jimmy Kimmel poking fun at him throughout
the explanation. Actually the real culprit is Faye Dunaway who got annoyed that
Warren Beatty was wasting time and when he showed her the envelope she just read out
La La Land. However what that card had written on it was……
EMMA STONE
LA LA LAND
Best Actress
Warren Beatty saw that, as was evident by the way he first
stared at the card, then checked the envelope for another card and then looked
up at the audience in the Dolby Theatre with amusement. He showed it to Faye
Dunaway who just read out the name of the film(Kimmel should’ve been like, “Oh
Faye.. What did you do..!”). It was she who did it and not him. (She didn’t even
go back out there to explain the error and left it to Warren Beatty)
Were there really 2 envelopes for each category? (That’s what
the Academy is saying and are saying that the staff of PricewaterhouseCoopers, accidentally handed them
the Best Actress envelope as it had been the previous award that was presented.
Emma Stone says she had the envelope of Best Actress along with the Golden
Statuette in her hand at the time the ‘winner’ was announced) Was it a prank by
Jimmy Kimmel?(hope that this is not the case?)
Yes, they are actors and can pull off such a stunt and act
innocent very easily, but, that is not the case as when one looks at shots of
the back the envelope held by Warren Beatty we can see Best Actress in a Lead
Role written in gold.
His initial joke was a jibe at the Oscar’s itself owing to
the difficulty it took them ti find a new host as they go through hosts so quickly,
”It’s my first time here and the way you people go through hosts it could be my
last time as well”. He thanked President Trump and spoke about the previous year’s
racism controversy, “Remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars were
racist.” Next up on his list was Amazon who were told that if they win the
Oscar (as producers of Manchester by the Sea ) they can expect it to arrive in 2-5
business days.
The ‘uninspiring’, ‘overrated’ Meryl Streep was next. ‘Mediocre
early work’ ‘underwhelming performances’ in Kramer vs Kramer and Sophie’s
choice(she won Academy Awards in both of those films) ‘lacklustre career’ He
then mentioned her 20th nomination. The segment was finished off
with Kimmel asking the Dolby Theatre to give Meryl a ‘totally undeserved round
of applause’. Meryl obliged and actually stood up and so did the rest of the
audience.(in an earlier post I had mentioned that the Hollywood stars would not
be offended by a joke made by Kimmel and it is seen here that no one just gave
a blank stare back at him)
Then he spotted Matt Damon……
His segments with Matt Damon furthered their feud. First he
said they’ve known each other so long that at that when he first met Matt, he (Jimmy)
was the fat one. He then spoke about how Matt Damon is selfish, and when he
decided to be unselfish he ended up giving an Oscar worthy role to his friend
and ended up making a Chinese ponytail movie, which lost 80 million dollars.
Smooth move.
In view of 20 years of them winning the Oscar for Best
Original Screenplay, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon presented that award. Firstly
they were introduced as 2 time Academy Award Winner Ben Affleck and guest. Then
Damon was played off every time he spoke and the camera panned to the orchestra
which showed Kimmel conducting it and saying, “Wrap it up quickly, we want to
go home.”
The Best Picture Award was introduced by Kimmel, “as his
favourite part of the show. The chance to see Matt Damon lose an Academy Award.”
The bad moments of the show were, tour bus segment where in
an attempt to take yet another dig at Trump he made fun of a Chinese girl’s
name Yulree with a few, "what’s", and then asked the next guy his name to which he
said Patrick prompting Kimmel to say, “See that’s a name.” In the segment
immediately after Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor he poked fun that
with a name like Mahershala, he certainly couldn’t name his kid Amy. This was a
clear joke showing how Asians and Asian names are different and hence
discriminated against.
The Joke on OJ and
the extra slice baloney lead to audible groans from the crowd. ( he did salvage
the situation by commenting what seemed like a future report, “almost midway
through the broadcast the crowd turned on Kimmel.”)
People say that the man went overboard with the Trump jokes,
but, what else was expected? I mean honestly, Trump’s immigration ban and
comments about the wall, would hamper several artists from the 7 countries and
from Mexico who may feel the need to boycott Hollywood as a protest against the
insult their country has faced Asghar Farhadi whose film won Best Foreign
Language film boycotted the ceremony. He may even ensure his films are not submitted
to the Academy as films from the countries that are banned should not reach the
country in which the ban has originated?
The part where Sunny Pawar was lifted (like how Rafiki lifts
baby Simba) has people trying to call it a racist scene as Sunny is a brown
Indian kid who was lifted to the music of Circle of Life from the Lion King.
No! He was lifted as he was small (any other small kid would have been lifted)
and he had acted in a movie called Lion. Also he consented to it and it made
sense. Lion and Lion King.
Not even once through
the show the audience felt disinterested and even as a T.V. viewer I was shocked
when they announced it was time for Best Picture (so soon? Chris Rock had lost
the audience after about an hour and a half and people just wanted the show to
end)
If people were expecting Jimmy Kimmel to take them into a
world free from the politics or stuff happening in the world, they deserve to
be disappointed as they haven’t been following the entire award season (every
award show has had the current political situation brought up in some way with
a jibe. At the Golden Globe’s Jimmy Fallon spoke about how the globes are a
place where the Popular vote is still considered) or haven’t ever seen Jimmy
Kimmel at his talk show.
The Winners
There are two categories that I feel got the award not
because of their film but because of situations in the world (I’m not saying
that the two were bad films).
Best Picture
Moonlight winning was unexpected (even though it truly was
the Best Picture) as the award season trends had everyone going ga ga over La
La Land. It possibly swayed voters not because of its film content, but because
of the #Oscarssowhitecontroversy over the past 2 years and continuous calls for
the Academy to be more inclusive. The film is about a gay black boy growing up
in the Miami projects in the 1980’s.
Best Foreign Language Film
Toni Erdmann (Germany) had swept the awards scene but lost
at the Oscars? Why because the winner ‘The Salesman’ was from Iran and the
Academy wanted to support the countries that have harshly had a travel ban to
the United States.
Changes
Unlike previous years the Films nominated for Best Picture weren't introduced in twos or threes throughout the show, but instead at the end. This was better as there weren't any unnecessary presenters during the show. Also prior to each of the Acting Award presentations they aired footage of the moments of victory and speeches of former winners in that category. This was a novel idea as it showed a collection of emotions of what the award meant to past winners.
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