What the hell just happened?
Screw the routine, let's start with what happened at the end: Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are ready to read the winner of Best Picture, Beatty goofily stretches out the suspense, before finally letting Dunaway read off that La La Land. The film's producers are doing their speeches all the while what appeared to be the Oscar show runners running around in the background, looking for the envelope. Jordan Horowitz announces that there's was a mistake and says that Moonlight really won. He keeps repeating that it isn't a joke before showing on camera the evidence.
"Warren! What did you do?!" Beatty then steps up and says that he opened the envelope and saw Emma Stone for La La Land, meaning he received the Best Actress in a Lead Role for the accountants. In other words, he's not the next Steve Harvey.
I'm very glad that Moonlight got the surprise upset but this awards controversy overshadowed its accomplishment of being the first Best Picture winner with a queer lead character. But man, it would have been so bad if the opposite happened; the backlash against La La Land would have been far greater if that transpired.
Due to the epic failure at the end, I'm once again back at my usual average of 16-8. Just great.
As for the ceremony overall, it was alright but way too long. Further plagued down by repetitive anti-Trump remarks and "stand united" declarations. The flat theme of the show was "Inspiration", which was shown via three unnecessary segments where Charlize Theron, Seth Rogen, and Javier Bardem talk about their favorite films. Because that draws in the new viewers: Bardem praising Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County.
Jimmy Kimmel started off painfully dull and became awful by the end. His opening monologue had him speaking way too fast, killing the timing of each and every joke, and his material was so softball. It was so bad that he literally retold the same joke about Elle and Captain Fantastic: congrads, Viggo and Isabella, but no one saw your movie. He ran his comedic feud with Matt Damon further into the ground save for his "Inspiration" clip where he mocked We Bought a Zoo. Referring The Great Wall as that "Chinese ponytail movie" also was a pointed observation.
Oh wow, that's a pretty bad tan job there, Alicia Vikander.
Suicide Squad. Oscar winning movie.
The gladhands were the student Oscar winners. They were fine save for the rude bearded guy who was aggressively pushing the make-up winners.
That Rolex commercial with the ill-timed appearance of Bill Paxton from Titanic. Ouch. The commercial itself was pretty good though, basically a truncated version of The Clock.
Lin-Manuel Miranda produced a Hamiliton-like intro before the performance of "How Far I'll Go", just to remind you that Hamiliton exists and everyone can't get enough of it.
Auli'i Cravalho was doing a great job on stage and then that ocean flag waver hit bopped her in the head.
During the ad breaks, Wal-Mart premiered its newest marketing gimmick: having Marc Forster, Antoine Fuqua, and Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg produce a commercial around some random items on a receipt. All ended up being pretty damn bad. Fuqua ripped off Spielberg movies to tell a lame tale of a kid gifting a baby video monitor to an alien spacecraft, who gifts him a bunch of emojis. Forster had a nonsensical one with post-apocalyptic kid ravagers and little pigs. And finally, Rogen & Goldberg's ad was better produced, faking an one shot take of different musical stylings, but clearly showed they didn't give two licks trying to write a story.
So the gifted food to the stars segment this year was candy being air dropped from the ceiling while set to "Ride of the Valkyries". And of course, Kimmel made it so unfunny and repetitive.
Taraji P. Henson was a having a barrel of a time bequeathing the best reaction shots during the evening.
The theme to S.W.A.T.? That's a television show!
Honorary Oscar winner Jackie Chan brought a nice date to the show: a clothed teddy bear.
"My heart was broken!" So glad I don't have to rewatch that clip ever again.
Viola Davis won and gave the best award speech of the night.
Sting's "The Empty Chair" performance was so short and unmemorable, they had to have that "challenge authority with journalism" quote to draw up real applause.
Gael García Bernal remarks about the U.S.-Mexico Wall proposal and then just coldly introduces the nominees to Best Animated Film. Smooth.
It took nearly two hours until La La Land won something, starting first with Best Production Design.
My god, the tour bus gag. Absolute torture. All of the tourists entered into the Dolby Theater holding their phones in front of them. Screw Gary from Chicago, I hated that guy. Yeah, just take Mahershala Ali's well earned Oscar out of his hands and give him your camera so he can do the forced upon selfie, you loser!
The Oscars orchestra played "Nowhere Fast" from Streets of Fire!!! Hell freaking yes!!!
Was the "Movies Around The World" montage really necessary? It was just a bunch of random interviews with foreign people, one of whom said that their absolute favorite American movie was Suicide Squad.
Hey guys, isn't Back To The Future the absolute best? Here's Seth Rogen coming out of the DeLorean with Michael J. Fox while wearing the self-lacing Nike shoes. Not as cool as when the pro wrestling tag team The Time Splitters did it.
Hacksaw Ridge for Best Editing? The movie lambasted for how slow the first half is?
Kimmel's "Circle of Life" gag with Sunny Pawar was so damn awkward and possibly a bit racist.
I don't know what was going on during that teaser for Bright, a Netflix Original Film starring Will Smith, but it looked cool so, yay!!! Get that reference, if you can!
Speaking of Netflix, they finally won their first Oscar for distributing The White Helmets. Eat that Amazon!
Oh god, now its time for Mean Tweets.
John Legend performing both nominated songs from La La Land, neither of which were sung by his character in the film, gave me bad flashbacks to that one Oscars when Beyonce sang three of nominated songs, included the one with the French kid choir.
Justin Schwartz wins Best Score, says he will not bore the million of viewers with a bunch of names, only to contradict himself immediately when he wins Best Score.
A lot of people were Farina'd during the "In Memoriam" segment. The one I noticed right away was Miguel Ferrer. Further omissions include Alexis Arquette, Jon Polito, Robert Vaughn, and Garry Shandling.
We Hate Movies accurately predicted it: John Hurt's clip would be him as Garrick Ollivander from Harry Potter.
Spoilers abound in the movie clips, as per usual with the Oscars, but the reveal for Casey Affleck's stigma in Manchester By The Sea was particularly bad.
And then you know what happened.
Lion and Hell Or High Water were this year's total shut-outs.
A bunch of nice accomplishments throughout the show only to be ruined by a failed finale and a dreadful host.
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