by Oscar Deleon. <filmfestivals.com>
We weren't trying to be funny -- It was a genuine f***up --
The mistaken announcement that LaLaLand had won best picture and the embarassed correction by co-awarder Warren Beatty naming Moonlighting as the real winner was a most appropriate capstone to the "craziest Oscars ever".
Explanation: he was handed the wrong envelope -- which named Emma Stone as best actress --. which was misinterpreted by co-awarder Faye Dunaway as the Best Picture award. Nice to see the stars of Bonnie and Clyde (1967!) reunited here on stage fifty years later, but ~~ How slipshod can you get? -- misreading Best Actress as "Best Film" -- (Lady Faye, mincing no words, later confessed at a post gala party "I really f****d up!)
Well,
the mistake was immediately spotted evoking a moment of chaos on stage during which actors nearly forgot that they were actually supposed ro be using their stage time to attack Donald Trump, as Warren and Faye flubbed the dub.
The Moonlight team then took the stage to bask in the glory of a minor low budget black underdog beating out a highly favored big budget white production at the wire. But even director Barry Jenkins admitted that it seemed like a dream ... surreal!
Moonlight picked up not only the Best Picture award, but also a best supporting actor Oscar for Black Muslim rapper Mahershala Ali, born in Oakland -- not exactly an immigrant, but nevertheless a declared follower of Allah. So, take that Mr. Trump!
Also quite fitting that Emma Stone clutching her Oscar statuette for dear life, called this the "Craziest Oscars ever".
Emma's being declared Best actress over the likes of
(a) Isabelle Huppert in ELLE or
(b) Natalie Portman in JACKIE was truly crazy if not simply dim-witted.
Huppert and Portman's work in their respective films was a light year above and beyond Stone's routine turn in Lalaland, and indicates that the Academy Awards have nothing to with quality but far more to do with RightThink in the Orwellian sense, and moreover that senility is rampant among the selectors.
There is no basis even for discussion between Ms. Stone's pallid performance in TralalaLand and the superb performances of Huppert and Portman in the films mentioned.
Moreover, the exclusion of Elle and Jackie from the Best Film category in favor of far lesser films is further evidence that the Oscars are next to meaningless in terms of assessment of the annual crop of films and reflect extreme lack of taste, hardening of the arteries, and deplorable ignorance of world cinema.
As for Chazelle's direction of this thoroughly misguided imitation missile, one can only say: "What direction? -- Give us a break. Any other director would have been more worthy. Paul Verhoeven, director of Elle wasn't even nominated.
The biggest Joke of all on the public was not the envelope switch but the entire Oscar Ceremony which was basically a clumsy apology for racism with no underlying concept of film quality. As my Ukrainian imigrant grandmother would say: Feh!