The most talked about moments from Hollywood’s biggest night.
The 89th Academy Awards were kicked off by a great performance from Justin Timberlake who sang his hit song “Can’t Stop the Feeling” which was nominated in the category of Best Original Song from the animated movie “Trolls”. While many of the winners were quite predictable, there were a few surprises and one Oh EMMM Gee moment. This year’s host, Jimmy Kimmel, kept the show fresh and funny.
Kimmel wasted no time poking fun at the president, who became the butt of many of the evening’s zingers as well as acceptance speeches. After a couple minutes of ribbing actress Meryl Streep, who was nominated for Best Actress in a Featured Role and who looked ravishing in a blue off the shoulder Elie Saab dress, Kimmel asked her “Is that an Ivanka?” referring to Streep’s dress and the president’s daughter’s clothing line.
By the very first award, which was given out for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, we knew it would be a great night for minorities and for the LGBT Community. Winning the award was Mahershala Ali for his role in “Moonlight” which takes place and was filmed right here in South Florida. The movie is about a young man who is coming to terms with being gay in Miami’s black community. Ali became the first Muslim to win an Oscar for acting.
Among the highlights of the “gay Super Bowl” were Viola Davis’ epic speech that had the entire audience, including yours truly, in tears, Jimmy Kimmel making it rain candy- on his cue hundreds of parachutes attached to Twizzlers, Jr. Mints, and Milk Duds fell from the ceiling and all three of “Moonlight’s” historic wins; besides Ali’s win for Best Supporting Actor, the film also took home the trophies for Best Adapted Screenplay for Barry Jenkins, and also Best Picture.
In a strange twist from Steve Harvey’s Miss Universe playbook, the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers totally screwed up the ending of the show by announcing the wrong movie as winner of Best Picture, the night’s biggest and most prestigious award. Apparently, Oscar winner (not this year though) Warren Beatty, who was a co-presenter of the award, was handed the wrong card backstage. He was given a duplicate of the Best Actress card instead of the card with the Best Picture winner on it. When it came time to read the winner, the card said Emma Stone for “La La Land”. Beatty was visibly confused and paused after reading the card several times. He showed the card to his co-presenter, Faye Dunaway, who then announced “The Oscar goes to ‘La La Land’.” It was only after the entire cast of “La La Land” was onstage to receive the award did the show’s producers come out to correct the mistake and give the award to the ACTUAL winner Moonlight. What a debacle and embarrassment.
Other major winners for the night were Casey Affleck for Best Actor in a Leading Role for “Manchester by the Sea”, Emma Stone for Best Actress in a Leading Role for “La La Land” and Damien Chazelle for Best Director for “La La Land.” The award for Best Foreign Language Film went to “The Salesman” from Iran. The film’s director, Iranian Asghar Farhadi refused to attend the ceremony in protest of the recent Muslim Ban imposed on his country by the US.
As far as fashion goes, as always, The Oscars didn’t disappoint. For me, this year it was all about velvet, blue velvet to be exact. Taraji P. Henson stunned and slayed in a custom off the shoulder Alberta Ferretti velvet gown. For the fellas, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson justified his recent sexiest man alive title and wore a navy blue velvet jacket that fit like a glove and had gay boys the world over drooling like puppy dogs. Other standouts on the Red Carpet at this year’s ceremony were Viola Davis in a gorgeous red Armani gown with the perfect train. Singer Hailee Steinfeld looked amazing in her sheer Ralph & Russo Couture gown while, in our opinion (but not Vogue’s) Dakota Johnson’s gold Gucci number left a little something to be desired.
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