89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

anonymous1980
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by anonymous1980 »

Uri wrote:For goodness sake - it's an awards show. So he messed up. Big deal. It's not as if a missile was launched and a war wrongly started.
We know it's just an awards show, Uri. And ultimately, it doesn't have any real-world stakes. So we're talking about the issue at hand in the context of a silly award show. Think about it though, it would have looked REALLY, REALLY bad on the Academy's part if the accountants just kept silent and the mistake wasn't rectified at all because the real winner is a gay, black movie with an all-black cast and the one given the Oscar was a film about Hollywood with white leads. After two years of #OscarsSoWhite, that would've been very damaging.
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by Uri »

anonymous1980 wrote:
Mister Tee wrote:Don't know if this is the place to put it, but both PwC accountants ave been told they'll never work the Oscars again. Which seems a bit unfair to Martha Ruiz, whose only fault was not calling out the mistake faster.
The Oscars stage manager play-by-play as to what happened

Martha Ruiz apparently DID deserve to get removed from the job: “I was in the wings stage left with Jimmy [Kimmel] when they announced ‘La La Land.’ We watched for about 10 more seconds, and during that entire time Martha was no more than five feet away from us. When ‘La La Land’ was announced, she did not try to get my attention, she did not say anything. And she’s supposed to have memorized the winners.”
BURN HER ON A STAKE!!!!
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by anonymous1980 »

Mister Tee wrote:Don't know if this is the place to put it, but both PwC accountants ave been told they'll never work the Oscars again. Which seems a bit unfair to Martha Ruiz, whose only fault was not calling out the mistake faster.
The Oscars stage manager play-by-play as to what happened

Martha Ruiz apparently DID deserve to get removed from the job: “I was in the wings stage left with Jimmy [Kimmel] when they announced ‘La La Land.’ We watched for about 10 more seconds, and during that entire time Martha was no more than five feet away from us. When ‘La La Land’ was announced, she did not try to get my attention, she did not say anything. And she’s supposed to have memorized the winners.”
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by Uri »

For goodness sake - it's an awards show. So he messed up. Big deal. It's not as if a missile was launched and a war wrongly started. Or a patient was shot with the wrong dosage and died. Everything is fine. It was funny and fun - OK, not to the privileged, over compensated frat boys who produced LLL - but to the rest of the world, including the very level headed stars of the film, who seemed to be truly entertained by this shenanigan. So yes, this guy should be sent by the firm to an accountants Siberia for the next couple of years and deals only with pharmaceutical companies instead of movie stars. As for the rest of us - we should cherish this lovely gift of harmless Drama we were lucky to have, thanks to this guy.
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by Big Magilla »

Not allowing the two reps back is less severe than firing the firm outright. I agree it's unfair to Ruiz, but Cullinan is really looking bad.

This from Jeff Wells:

From the Variety article: “The newly uncovered photographs not only show Cullinan engaged on his phone shortly before the La La Land miscommunication — he’s also photographed mixing two red envelopes backstage alongside Beatty and Best Actor winner Casey Affleck, who had just exited the stage.

“This would dispute PWC’s official explanation that Cullinan grabbed the wrong envelope from a ‘backup pile,’ and shows he was likely always in possession of both the Best Actress envelope (which was given to Beatty) and the Best Picture envelope, the night’s two final awards.
“In [Variety’s] exclusive images, Cullinan can be seen on his mobile phone at 9:04 p.m. PST, according to the metadata on the photographer’s camera (his Emma Stone tweet was posted at 9:05 p.m. and later deleted). Meanwhile Beatty and Dunaway had taken the stage at 9:03 p.m., putting the PWC executive on social media at the start of Beatty and Dunaway’s presentation.”

In other words, as Beatty and Dunaway were struggling on-camera with the meaning of an envelope card that said “Emma Stone, La La Land“, Cullinan — no doubt having concluded that the show was essentially over and that his PwC duties had been satisfied — was tweeting his Emma Stone photo.
The mistaken Best Picture announcement (i.e., Dunaway announcing that the winner was La La Land) may have happened just before Cullinan’s tweet or just after or right at the exact same moment, but the bottom line is that he had disengaged from the proceedings and wasn’t on the stick.
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by Mister Tee »

Don't know if this is the place to put it, but both PwC accountants ave been told they'll never work the Oscars again. Which seems a bit unfair to Martha Ruiz, whose only fault was not calling out the mistake faster. But I guess Cheryl Boone Isaacs was determined to make a big stand. (She does seem to have a penchant for doing a bit more than the situation demands.)
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by Big Magilla »

Mister Tee wrote:
danfrank wrote: and I liked that they didn't waste time introducing each best picture separately.
Given all else that happened, it's not surprising that few have noted this. Magilla will confirm for me that the way it was done Sunday -- a clip from each film just prior to the best picture presentation -- is the way it was done in the 50s/60s. I don't recall exactly when they started staggering them throughout the show, but I never thought it was as effective, and, especially in this era of up-to-10, it consumes an inordinate amount of time mid-show (as well as setting up ludicrous moments like Sacha Baron Cohen making a mockery of Room). I hope next year's producers keep the change intact.
I agree on all points. That ending overwhelmed everything else so much that I forgot to comment on the exorcism of the introduction of each and every Best Picture nominee which alone made the show the best in years.

I don't think introducing staggered clips of the Best Picture nominees began until sometime in the last decade. It was bad enough when there were just five nominees. With ten, it was just deadly.

Hopefully this elimination will spill over to other film awards shows. Leave the practice to the musical nominees at the Tonys.
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

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danfrank wrote: and I liked that they didn't waste time introducing each best picture separately.
Given all else that happened, it's not surprising that few have noted this. Magilla will confirm for me that the way it was done Sunday -- a clip from each film just prior to the best picture presentation -- is the way it was done in the 50s/60s. I don't recall exactly when they started staggering them throughout the show, but I never thought it was as effective, and, especially in this era of up-to-10, it consumes an inordinate amount of time mid-show (as well as setting up ludicrous moments like Sacha Baron Cohen making a mockery of Room). I hope next year's producers keep the change intact.

I've been thinking about Sonic's remark the other night, that we should stop calling the awards predictable at least until after they've been given out. The past two years have been viewed as hopelessly routine going in, but have yielded startling upsets. The real problem is the hive mind of the bloggers -- they seem to value being in-the-know/savviness above actually covering the event, and they set in motion a "we all know who's going to win" narrative that dulls the season. In fact, their predictions often are correct, but even when they're not (as with Moonlight Sunday, or Stallone a year ago), they're unanimous in their predictions.

I have a longstanding practice of compiling predictions from friends and critics/pundits for whom I have some respect. Among that group of roughly 45 (some of whom don't predict all categories), there was close-to-consensus on all but a few categories this year -- best actor (the only major one with divided opinions), costume design, sound editing, and make-up (though some of us were nervous about original screenplay, my group went Manchester 39-5). It happens that the majority mis-called every one of those competitive categories -- Denzel was slightly ahead of Casey, La La Land and Jackie utterly dominated costumes (winner Fantastic Beasts got only 2 votes), Hacksaw Ridge got 27 votes in sound editing (Arrival actually ran third, behind La La, with only 7 votes), and Star Trek got more than twice as many predictions as Suicide Squad.

And then there were the ones that were viewed as non-competitive by my group, but went on to be upsets -- Moonlight of course (only 2 people predicted it, though those two predicted so many other long shots it seemed more contrarianism than foresight), and Hacksaw in sound mixing and editing (6 and 2 votes, respectively).

Of course, there were also categories everyone agreed on that turned out correct: the other three actors, cinematography and production design, visual effects, documentary, animated feature. Clearly we're going to have some such instances every year; that's been true in all the ears I've followed the Oscars (no one doubted "The Way We Were" was going to win best song). My problem is, the way things are set up now, everything's a gimme, and, while it's fun to enjoy the moment the consensus is shattered, I miss the sense of general doubt leading up to the event.
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by danfrank »

Here's the (quite moving) speech we apparently missed due to the great Oscar debacle of 2017: http://www.indiewire.com/2017/02/barry- ... 201788454/

I thought this was one of the better Oscar shows in recent memory. Kimmel did not seem the least intimidated by the hosting task and was genuinely funny, the sets were impressive, and I liked that they didn't waste time introducing each best picture separately. The show was well-paced overall. I have to say that my decision to tape the show and start watching it nearly an hour in was a decision I'll surely repeat, as skipping through all the commercials made watching it much less of a slog. I was almost caught up to live viewing by the end, allowing me to respond in a timely fashion to the texts that came pouring in with some version of "can you believe what just happened?"
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by Sonic Youth »

Big Magilla wrote:Don't be surprised if before long some enterprising ambulance chaser talks him into bringing a suit against the Academy for invasion of privacy and whatever else they can think of for a quick settlement.
The so-called journalists who decided it would be a noble idea to look into the criminal background of a few tourists... what were THEY chasing?
"What the hell?"
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by Big Magilla »

Don't be surprised if before long some enterprising ambulance chaser talks him into bringing a suit against the Academy for invasion of privacy and whatever else they can think of for a quick settlement.
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by OscarGuy »

They probably still went through a security check point, it would be foolish to believe otherwise.
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by Big Magilla »

Don't blame the Post. The story is all over the internet, I just happened to pick the first one that came up. It began with Ch. 7 News in Chicago.

Supposedly Gary's twenty year term was due to multiple felonies (N.Y. Daily News) including stealing perfume, according to his public defender who had been trying for all those years to get him released.

The whole thing just seems odd to me. With the heavy security even the most recognizable celebrities must go through to get into the Oscars, they pick a group of strangers at random from a tour bus to bring out on stage to a worldwide audience. It was a nutty idea that served no purpose whatsoever.
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by bizarre »

Sonic Youth wrote: This is true but I think people are getting carried away with all the fawning. The Washington Post's headline reads "‘La La Land’ producer Jordan Horowitz is the truth-teller we need right now". The Boston Globe tweeted "Every generation needs a hero, and 36-year-old 'La La Land' producer Jordan Horowitz might just be ours." Overboard much? He was just being a grown-up, a gentleman (although that's rare enough in this day and age). He handled a very tough situation with great poise, and good for him. I liked how he handled it. But lets not forget Barry Jenkins? He was just as much the gentleman, equally classy and generous, both on the broadcast and during the backstage interview. And he came across as a really nice person to me. I wish he received more attention.
He was gracious and handled the pressure well, yes, but this reminds me of a satirical Reductress post made yesterday titled "Brave! These ‘La La Land’ Producers Graciously Allowed ‘Moonlight’ to Accept the Oscar It Won" :lol: What else was he to do? The hero worship has gotten out of control.
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Re: 89th Oscars: General & Ceremony Discussion

Post by ITALIANO »

OscarGuy wrote:Why the hell is this even a story? Who cares if Gary from Chicago was an ex-con? Everyone gets a chance to start a new life regardless of their past.

Exactly. Plus, it was a nice moment. But it seems that this year's show - which I liked alot - hasn't been that well received in the US. Oh well...
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