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