"Moonlight" Overtakes LA LA Fantasies After Biggest Flub In Oscar History

The instant of total chaos last night after Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway screwed the pooch at the Oscars by reading from the wrong card.

We had waited some three and a half hours and finally the award of the night was to be announced, the Oscar for 'Best Picture'. I'd already written in the previous post how I believed awarding the Oscar to "La La Land" -  a vacuous, navel gazing musical about aspiring actors in LA  - would be a monumental waste. So Janice and I waited with bated breath as Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway approached the mic with the red envelopes bearing the winner.

The pair had one job to do and one only: simply announce the Best Picture movie. How hard could it be? Well evidently pretty damned hard as the pair screwed the pooch - making infamous  Oscar history by announcing "La La Land" - then some three minutes later, having to retract it  after La La Land  producer Jordan Horowitz interrupted the celebration. He held up the card and immediately  called attention to the discrepancy on the winners card in his hand. That card showed the actual Best Picture winner the award went to "Moonlight", a small circulation, Miami-based indie flick.

  Until the "Moonlight" cast and team made its way to the stage everyone looked lost in a surreal, parallel universe. Or to put in more blunt terms, they didn't know whether to shit or go blind, given"Moonlight" was named Oscar winner  after   "La La Land" was announced first.

What happened to cause this travesty, and whose fault was it? Contrary to some hot head Trumpie nitwits (commenting on the Miami Herald site) it was not "stupid Hollywood liberals" but one pair of over the hill actors to blame.  While the keepers of the envelopes (Price Waterhouse Cooper) did admit giving Beatty the wrong envelop (it was for Actress in a Leading Role) it was ultimately Beatty (and Dunaway's) job to provide to final fail safe. That was as opposed to acting the part of two unthinking automatons.  Hence, Michael Strahan's take this a.m. that "it was nobody's fault" is bare balderdash. Of course it was! It's the fault of anyone who doesn't take the initiative to use his or her brains!

We know computers are basically "dumb" (save Watson maybe) because they always do just what you program them to do, so they take input and process it literally.  Humans are supposed to know better and think before they act or expel or generate output (Trump excluded). Beatty didn't - this despite the fact that the damned outside of the envelope was clearly freakin' labeled in gold-embossed letters, "Actress in a Leading Role". Even if Beatty  and Dunaway didn't clearly see the envelope lettering, once he opened it up and pulled out the sheet even Faye Dunaway observed (as shown this a.m. on ABC): it said "Emma Stone".

A sentient human would know at that point something was amiss. Rather than go ahead and babble out the wrong award, they'd have done better to ACT like sentient beings. In other words,  pause the proceedings saying: "Excuse us but we think we've been handed the wrong envelope."  This might have created some minor embarrassment as the correct envelope was retrieved, but would have avoided a total, unbelievable fuckup of the proportions observed.

In that sense, I blame both of them for being ultimately responsible for the snafu when they had the final control over ensuring it didn't happen. But they botched it, creating shock for both the falsely named winners, and also the actual winners. Who, let us note, were denied the singular spotlight and acclaim  they were due for winning the top prize of the night. Having that moment of spotlight eclipsed by an  incorrect award. (Which is now mostly being talked about as opposed to the winning movie).

And that was no small achievement for a small budget film (est. $1.7 million by The Miami Herald to make it) by two guys - Barry Jenkins and Tarrell Alvin McCraney- who hail from Liberty City in Miami. Here's all you need to know about Liberty City: In LA terms it is roughly analogous to Watts or South Central. It's the "hood" where  in 1984 -  after I returned from an American Astronomical Society conference in Baltimore - my cousin Linda sped past the area in her Corvette,  driving from the airport on the I-95 expressway at 85 mph.   In her words: "We are not going to go slow here or even stop at any lights!"

The movie itself is based on a play ('In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue') by McCraney concerning a troubled kid ("Chiron") who must deal not only with assorted bullies, but a drug addicted mother.  The kid in one scene is chased into an abandoned building by a mob of boys tossing rocks and wielding sticks. After some time, the door opens and it's one of the main local drug dealers (played by Mahershala Ali) who also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, e.g.


The drug dealer then becomes the boy's father figure and mentor to steer him toward a more constructive life - or at least try. (I won't give any more details for those who'd like to watch it. It's currently playing on DirectTV Pay Per View, it's hard to find in the cinemas - but the Oscar may change that.)

In his review of "Moonlight, " L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan wrote, "So intimate you feel like you're trespassing on its characters’ souls, so transcendent it's made visual and emotional poetry out of intensely painful experience, it's a film that manages to be both achingly familiar and unlike anything we've seen before."

Though I had wanted to see 'Hidden Figures' win (last post) because of it's wide appeal, I am okay with "Moonlight" given how - in Barry Jenkins' words - it had shone light on troubled kids of color who barely got any attention in film. Nothing to "mirror" them or their lives. And just as La La Land was described as a love letter to LA, "Moonlight" was described as a love letter to Miami, urban blight and all. In Barry Jenkins words:

“Miami felt really small to me when I was a kid. You couldn’t really leave the neighborhood — the city was so compartmentalized — and because of the way I grew up, I don’t remember it as a happy place. But it wasn’t like ‘Boyz n the Hood’ either. There weren’t as many guns on the street as there are now. It didn’t feel like a dark place, even though there were a lot of dark things going on around us."

In the end, the reality of Miami and Liberty City triumphed over the movie star fantasies stoked by La La Land. The tragedy is that in the wake of the Best Picture disaster last night the talk is more about the disaster than the movie itself. 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies-news-reviews/article135195944.html#storylink=cpy

"Best Picture" Oscar Should Go To 'HIDDEN FiGURES' - But Likely Won't

African-American NASA women compute orbital elements for John Glenn's mission in 'Hidden Figures'. It should win 'Best Picture' if Hollywood's navel grazers don't choose "La La Land"


"Self-regarding movies about the greatness and craziness and triumph and tragedy of those who make movies have become the new Oscar norm."  -   Andrew O'Herhir, Salon.com, February 2015

Let us concede that in a sane world - which is emphatically not the one we inhabit right now- the superb 2016 film "Hidden Figures" would come away with most Academy Awards, including 'Best Picture'. The film had wide appeal across all demographics, and featured the little known but critical role of African -Americans in the NASA Manned Space Program. The movie basically highlights a little known facet that a team of African-American women - trained in high level 'rocket science' math- actually did the computations that put astronaut  John Glenn into successful orbit in February, 1962.  The women  (Katherine G. Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan) were referred to as "human computers" within NASA.

Not only was the film the best math-based movie to come along since "Good Will Hunting" and "A Beautiful Mind", but it also touched on the civil rights struggles of the 1960s - in conjunction with  the aspirations of talented African Americans. (A trenchant moment in the film occurs when one of the NASA women informs her boss (played by Kevin Costner): "There are no colored bathrooms in this building or any building outside the west campus - which is half a mile away. Did you know that? I have to walk to Timbuktu just to relieve myself'.)

Alas, competing for attention will be the vacuous Hollywood navel gazing confection called "La La Land" which one critic in LA Magazine described as a ho-hum musical with a basically plug and play role for Emma Stone ( "Mia" )  who yields most of the actual lines to her dancing mate "Sebastian"  played by Ryan Gosling. But as others noted, neither really hits the mark so one wonders what all the fuss is about.  Well, more LA -based navel grazing where the movie makers and actors, members of the Academy are more entranced by their own art than wonderful films of more general appeal.

The UK Guardian ('La La Land's Inevitable Oscar's Win Is A Disaster For Hollywood And For Us')basically summarizes my own view. And you'd think that with box office numbers tanking the past several years the Hollywood cognoscenti would get a clue and cease the navel gazing with their awards. But it doesn't seem so.

According to the Guardian:

"Rarely have the Oscars seen such a dead cert. If you fancy La La Land for best picture, the most attractive odds you will get are 9-2 on. The film is also nominated in another 13 categories, tying with Titanic and All About Eve for most ever nods. It has already snagged a record-breaking seven Golden Globes, and five Baftas.

Critics have been equally charmed. In Britain, the coveted five stars have been bestowed not just by the Sun, the Mirror and Metro, but also by the Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph. Audiences have followed suit. The film has taken more than 10 times its $30m (£24m) budget at the box office.
In such circumstances, you would expect a bit of a backlash, and a La La Land insurgency has duly kicked off.

The male lead, Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian, has been indicted for boorishness and insensitivity. When he is not whitesplaining jazz, he is mansplaining it to Emma Stone’s Mia. Both characters have been thought shallow, and chemistry between them has been found lacking. Technique has also been faulted. Gosling and Stone are no Fred and Ginger in the hoofing stakes, and their “reedy voices” have disappointed. For some, the narrative sags and the plot fails to convince"

That extended indictment ought to be enough to sink most films, but with too many airheads too smitten - probably just by the title - there may be little chance of  'Hidden Figures'  overtaking it.  Thus, I'd compare a win to the 2012 Best Picture Oscar that (seriously)went to the back and white, SILENT French film, "The Artist".   Another film endowed with more hype than genuine quality, imho.  As I wrote in my Feb. 19, 2012 post:

Here's the deal: as movie prices are now jacked up to the point that movie attendance has dropped off precipitously, and one must expect to shell out at least $25 for two, for the film plus just a diet coke and small popcorn, why would you pump and hump a silent black and white movie? Oh wait! I got it! To entice the elites to drool all over themselves at their impeccable "artistic" taste and refined perceptions ....which vastly exceed ....by light years...the Philistine tastes of the hoi polloi, otherwise known as the "masses".

The Guardian goes on, again I concur totally:

"La La Land has been branded feeble, dull, flat, humorless, bloodless and unengaging. It has been called “disappointingly mediocre”.  In fact, these reactions can be traced to a deeper deficiency: the Oscar favorite is a fake movie.  Poke your finger through the sugary icing and you find no cake beneath – no heart, no soul, no joy, no warmth, no wonder.

To create the illusion of charm, the film relies not on intrinsic strengths but on external trappings"

SO, in a real way the film is kind of like the Trump presidency, all about trappings and no substance. No heft.   The there is the copycat of atmosphere aspect, i.e.:

"When Gosling hangs from a lamp-post, it is to tell you this is Singing in the Rain. West Side Story, Funny Face, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Shall We Dance, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and plenty of others are similarly appropriated. La La Land wants you to believe that it shares the joy, humour, tragedy and humanity of such celluloid treasures. It doesn’t."

And:

"Mia is a cipher because she is just the prisoner of ambition. Seb sees himself as a heroic champion of art, but he is more of a nerd than a musician. For him, jazz is mainly fodder for his vanity and pomposity."

And lastly the biggest knockdown, reinforcing this pathetic flick is one for the Trump era of bigots, braggarts and narcissists:

"La La Land is a film for our time. With our self-nurturing, self-promotion, clicktivism, Twitterstorms, sexts and selfies, we are all narcissists now. This being so, many of us would kill to get into Seb or Mia’s shoes. .... Nonetheless, our descent into solipsism still carries with it lingering disquiet. La La Land helps us put this aside by spangling self-love with stardust.

It is easy to see why the Academy’s voters have embraced La La Land. Many of them will have followed a path all too similar to Seb and Mia’s. Seeing their life-choices vindicated by the witchcraft of their trade must have been something of a comfort. All the same, the best picture winners that stick in the memory, such as Schindler’s List, Gandhi, Chariots of Fire and Titanic, tend to extol humanity’s better nature, not its shortcomings."

Indeed. And if a genuinely worthy Best Picture candidate is available that extols humanity it is "Hidden Figures".  Sadly, the Hollywood navel gazers will be more focused on awarding the Oscar to a  mediocre musical that vaguely reflects their own acting paths. In where else? LA LA Land!

But some of these La La land people will never get it. Tom Hanks, who once planned a 13- part HBO series to vindicate the Warren Commission,  announced not long ago (Denver Post, p. 3E): "If people don't go out and embrace this wonderful film, we are all doomed!"  Seriously, Tom?  Personally, I think you're better served sticking to your Warren Commission Follies.