2017 Oscar Awards

We’ll start with the obvious:  holy crap!  I was flabbergasted.  While I wasn’t super into La La Land and was very glad to see Moonlight take home Best Picture, that was not the way for it to go down.  Obviously, I felt bad for the La La Land folks, who managed to be incredibly gracious in the face of a big disappointment, but I felt bad for the Moonlight team, too.  Yes, they won Best Picture, indisputably – however, it couldn’t have felt like that in the moment.  I’m sure most of their feelings were somewhere between “No, wait – are you serious?  Are you actually serious?  Is this a joke?” and “So you’re basically saying, ‘Here, have the night’s most prestigious award!  All you have to do is tear it out of your colleague’s hands!’”  Plus, all anyone’s talking about now is the screw-up, giving Moonlight’s actual big win less attention than it ought to be getting.  (Side note:  is this the first movie about LGBTQ people to win Best Picture?  I went back as far as 2000, and while a handful have been nominated, none have won.)

But how about the rest of it?  Since my own preferred picks were very Lion-heavy, I never saw Manchester by the Sea, and I was pulling really hard for Moana to get Best Original Song, not much went my way here.  I was nothing but happy for the following wins:  Viola Davis for Best Supporting Actress, Zootopia for Best Animated Film, The Jungle Book for Best Visual Effects, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for Best Costume Design.  If Arrival was only going to get one award, Best Sound Editing was a pretty well-deserved one, and although I was rooting for Lion folks for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, Moonlight also impressed me a lot in both categories, so I can’t be mad about their wins there.  I’m glad the whole night wasn’t the La La Land show, with Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea also picking up a few big awards each before Moonlight’s ultimate win, and I’m particularly happy that La La Land didn’t pick up Best Sound Mixing. 

The telecast was a mixed bag for me.  I thought most of Jimmy Kimmel’s bits fell flat (the best was the recurring Matt Damon digs, and at least dropping cookies/candy from the ceiling by parachute while the orchestra plays “Ride of the Valkyries” is a pretty expedient way to get the now-annual “give the audience some food” routine out of the way.)  For the most part, though, the proceedings felt fairly plodding, with lots of dragged-out gags and pre-filmed insertions that took forever.  Meanwhile, I thought most of the political stuff hit home quite well, even if they sometimes felt dropped in without preamble – I appreciated the remarks sent by Asghar Farhadi about the Muslim ban, Gael García Bernal referring to actors as “migrant workers” and speaking against the wall, and other statements made over the course of the night.

And because it must be said – Moana!  It didn’t win Best Original Song, but I maintain that it should have.  Regardless, they gave an amazing live performance.  When I first heard their number was going to be “performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda,” I wondered how that was going to work.  I love me some LMM, but 1) I was very confident that Auli’i Cravalho could sing that song better than him, and 2) I didn’t think the lyrics would resonate as well being sung by a man.  Luckily, Miranda knew all that and instead came out to set the scene with a newly-written rapped introduction, because these are the kinds of things he does as often as the rest of us breathe or eat, before turning the stage over to the wonderful Cravalho.  She was amazing, ridiculously poised for a teenage girl performing at the Oscars on national TV, and the ocean-themed visuals of the design and the dancers behind her were gorgeous.  Loved every second of it!