Oscars 2017: All the news, drama, and politics from the 89th Academy Awards – The Verge

The Oscars set a diversity record, but that’s not enough

2017-02-28T16:26:00-05:00

On Sunday night the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, amazingly, named Moonlight the Best Picture of 2016. It was a victory made all the more stunning by the circumstances: after La La Land was initially announced as the winner, producer Jordan Horowitz told a shocked audience that Moonlight had actually won the award. A hush passed over the crowd, before eventually giving way to raucous applause. Jimmy Kimmel cracked a joke about Steve Harvey, Warren Beatty meekly apologized, and Barry Jenkins, who could hardly contain his surprise, gave a speech that put a period on the whole night. "Very clearly, even in my dreams this could no …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Watch last night’s awkward Best Picture mixup at the Oscars

2017-02-27T11:01:28-05:00

The most exciting part of a very dull Oscars ceremony last night was when the wrong movie was announced as the Best Picture winner. Presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty read out La La Land as the winner, but it turned out Beatty was holding the wrong award envelope - for Best Actress, which Emma Stone had won just prior.

La La Land's acceptance speeches had to be interrupted to remedy the error. "This is not a joke," La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz said. "Moonlight has won best picture."

You can watch the entire weird, unexpected, unprecedented Oscars moment below.

Read the full story at The Verge.

This year at the Oscars: why would women expect any better?

2017-02-27T10:45:08-05:00

This year at the Oscars, much like every year at the Oscars, men were honored for the movies they made.

Outside of the women-only acting categories, almost no women were nominated for anything, and almost no women won. Casey Affleck won. Mel Gibson was not only there, but in the third row and often on camera. No one seemed to care, and the entire four-hour ceremony passed without any indication that the women in attendance, or at home, should have anything to be upset about.

A man won Best Director in a field of all male nominees. A man also won Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Audible had words for the Trump administration during the Oscars

2017-02-27T08:36:46-05:00

While plenty of jokes and comments about our current political reality were made onstage at last night's Academy Awards, Audible went out of its way to make commercials to criticize the White House. In two spots that aired last night, the Amazon-owned audiobook company used literature to attack the administration, without ever even saying Donald Trump's name.

In the first spot, Homeland's Claire Danes reads a passage from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. "Society is to blame for not providing free public education," Danes recites, "and society will answer for the obscurity it produces." By the end of the reading, the passage becomes a clear in …

Read the full story at The Verge.

How Moonlight’s creators made a universally acclaimed window into gay black identity

2017-02-27T02:14:52-05:00

Since the moment Barry Jenkins' feature film Moonlight debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in November 2016, it was a critical darling, with rave reviews following it from film festivals to theatrical release to the awards-show circuit, where it's racked up recognitions including Best Picture, Supporting Actor, and Screenplay at the Academy Awards. The film has met with nearly universal acclaim for its unusually formal yet daring approach to the familiar ground of the coming-of-age story. Writer-director Barry Jenkins based the film on Tarell McCraney's autobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, which follows a gay black cha …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Moonlight wins the Oscar for Best Picture

2017-02-27T00:15:39-05:00

Despite some, shall we say, hilarious reading difficulties, Moonlight has won the Oscar for Best Picture. The film managed to beat out favorite La La Land, along with other films Lion, Hacksaw Ridge, Arrival, and others.

It was a shocking turn of events for the film, even though it fully deserved the Academy's top honor. Presenter Faye Dunaway actually announced to the audience that La La Land won the award because Warren Beatty was mistakenly handed the envelope for Best Actress, which previously went to La La Land's Emma Stone. It was well after the producers and cast for that film came onstage that the correction was made and Moonlight t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Emma Stone wins the Best Actress Oscar for La La Land

2017-02-27T00:04:45-05:00

Emma Stone has won her first Academy Award for her role as the struggling actress / playwright Mia Dolan in Damien Chazelle's movie musical La La Land. She was nominated for an Oscar once before - Best Supporting Actress in 2014's Best Picture-winner Birdman - but did not win.

Stone won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy in January, and collected several other revered pre-Oscar prizes in the weeks following, including the British Academy of Film and Television's annual award and the Screen Actor's Guild award.

She was the only actress in this category who was nominated for a role in a film that was also in the running …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Casey Affleck wins the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Manchester by the Sea

2017-02-26T23:54:55-05:00

Surprising no one, Casey Affleck has just won the Oscar for Best Actor for his lead role in Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea. He takes home the award after besting the likes of Denzel Washington and Ryan Gosling for their performances in Fences and La La Land, respectively.

Affleck's win tonight was almost assured after taking home the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama at last month's Golden Globes. Indeed, his performance in Manchester has already been called one of the top performances of the year. In the film, he plays Lee Chandler, a handyman who must return to the titular small town after the death of his brother to care f …

Read the full story at The Verge.

La La Land’s Damien Chazelle wins the Oscar for Best Director

2017-02-26T23:48:06-05:00

Damien Chazelle has won his first Academy Award as the director of the movie musical La La Land. He was also nominated for the film's screenplay earlier in the night, and was previously nominated for the screenplay of his 2014 breakout film Whiplash.

Chazelle won in a field populated by acclaimed newcomer Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), the questionably redeemed Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge), recent hitmaker Denis Villeneuve (Arrival), and Academy favorite Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea). In a fairly cookie-cutter acceptance speech, he thanked his fellow nominees, "Emma [Stone] and Ryan [Gosling] for bringing the movie to life," and his wi …

Read the full story at The Verge.

So there was a DeLorean at the Oscars?

2017-02-26T23:39:34-05:00

For reasons that are still unclear, Seth Rogen and Michael J. Fox arrived on the Oscars stage in a DeLorean before presenting the Academy Award for Best Film Editing to Hacksaw Ridge. Rogen was even wearing Nike Air Mags. He then broke into singing a song from Hamilton. I'm very confused.

All this was probably to celebrate Back to the Future, which Rogen talked up in a filmed segment before he arrived on stage. It was quite possibly the coolest random moment in an evening full of random moments that felt shoe-horned in from out of nowhere. The awards show opened with a lengthy number featuring Justin Timberlake singing "Can't Stop the Feeli …

Read the full story at The Verge.