Oscars 2017

Like any award ceremony the Oscars is always surrounded with cynicism. There are always disagreements over both who was nominated and the eventual winners. Yet this year was especially dramatic. The awards evening was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel who had to deal with the unfortunate incident (spectacular mess up) that occurred at the close of the night.

La La Land took home 6 awards on the night, including a Best Actress award for Emma Stone and Best Director for Damien Chazelle. However, it failed to win the major prize of the night: Best Picture. An incident with the envelope which holds the results meant that presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty wrongly announced La La Land as winners of the award. The envelope they opened read Emma Stone, La La Land, who was the winner of Best Actress award earlier in the night. Seeing La La Land written, Dunaway and Beatty simply announced them as the winners. This resulted in chaos on stage as it was announced it was eventually revealed that Moonlight had actually won. It was a rather messy end to the awards evening.

Viola Davis won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Rose in Fences. This means Davis is the first ever African-American actor to win an Oscar, Tony and Emmy for acting. There was controversy over awarding Casey Affleck winning Best Actor, due to the sexual harassment allegations which surround the actor. The entire awards evening was scattered with political references, such as Gael Garcia Bernal’s impassioned speech against Trump’s wall to divide Mexico and the US.

The Oscars seemed to have diverted away from its #OscarsSoWhite stigma this year, but it remains to be seen if diversity is here to stay in Hollywood or not.  All that will be remembered from the Oscars 2017 is that it is the year when the wrong film literally did get awarded Best Picture.

Best Picture

Moonlight

Best Actress

Emma Stone — La La Land

Best Actor

Casey Affleck — Manchester by the Sea

Best Supporting Actress

Viola Davis — Fences

Best Supporting Actor

Mahershala Ali — Moonlight

Best Director

La La Land — Damien Chazelle

Best Original Screenplay

Manchester by the Sea — Kenneth Lonergan

Best Adapted Screenplay

Moonlight — Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney

Best Original Score

La La Land — Justin Hurwitz

Best Original Song

La La Land — City of Stars by Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

Best Cinematography

La La Land — Linus Sandgren

Best Foreign Language Film

The Salesman — Iran

Best Costume Design

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them — Colleen Atwood

Best Make-Up and Hairstyling

Suicide Squad — Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini and Christopher Nelson

Best Documentary Feature

OJ: Made in America

Best Sound Editing

Arrival — Sylvain Bellemare

Best Sound Mixing

Hacksaw Ridge — Kevin O’Connell, Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie and Peter Grace

Best Animated Short

Piper — Alan Barillaro and Marc Sondheimer

Best Animated Feature

Zootopia

Best Production Design

La La Land — David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco

Best Visual Effects

The Jungle Book — Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R Jones and Dan Lemmon

Best Film Editing

Hacksaw Ridge — John Gilbert

Best Documentary Short

The White Helmets — Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara

Best Live Action Short

Sing — Kristof Deak and Anna Udvardy