OSCARS 2017

I got really sick during the week leading up to Oscars with all the hand-shaking and hugging at every event I attended.  So, please forgive me if this is not my sharpest review ever.  And I kept switching-around for the arrivals, so I didn’t catch every interview on every channel.  And then I was too fascinated with the entire proceedings to take many notes. [Note: My illness also accounts for the very low number of photos here.]

But I must say that this was the absolute best Oscars I’ve ever seen. Jimmy Kimmel was the perfect host; he should get it as a permanent gig. His bits, like having tourists come in, and having snacks drop from the sky, were just wonderful. Unlike previous hosts (hint: Ellen Degeneres,) he wasn’t pushing hard and being pretentious; everything he did was just amusing. I’ve never seen an Oscars audience smile that much before!

And the set was beautiful and classy, also without trying too hard. It was the perfect background for the occasion.

And that was the best opening ever!!!!!!  I can’t say enough good things about it. Justin Timberlake is the man. Period. He made everyone happy. I was worried for a second about Jimmy Kimmel being able to follow that upbeat performance with his opening monolog, but it all worked-out great.

While I’m on the opening musical number for another second, I have to say that the rest of the music choices for the evening, (the entrance and exit bits,) were totally strange. Not one made sense.

Here are my very quick, very few observations of the arrivals shows this time:

There was an idiot woman on local Channel 5 here in LA, who said that there was an “outpouring of support” for Bill Paxton…after he died!  What a stupid sentence! It literally made me cringe.

I absolutely loved Theresa Palmer’s dress. For me, it was the best of the night. And she just had a baby ten weeks ago!!!

Kirsten Dunst looked great in her dress, too. Her face is still funny, (and not in a good way,) but her body looked like a Barbie doll!

That was a hideous dress on Emma Stone! That girl needs as much help as she can get, and this dress did the opposite. Coupled with her stringy hair and blindingly-white body, the whole look was a fail.

This was the most adorable moment of the arrivals shows: Ryan Seacrest was talking to Hacksaw Ridge star, Andrew Garfield, about his kiss with Ryan Reynolds at the Golden Globes last month. Then Ryan asked him if he knew whom he was sitting next to at this event, and Andrew answered, “Hopefully next to someone handsome.”  Adorbs!

Okay, let’s get to the few notes I took during the actual show. (I tweeted most of my thoughts live that night. It’s never too late to follow me, so you don’t miss-out the next time: @MajorCelebrity.)

They did a horrible new thing this year to get winners off the stage. Instead of playing them off with music, they had people come out and usher them off the stage! How rude! What will it be next year? Will they hire Sandman (from the Apollo) to sweep them off?!

A man who won as part of a team for hair and make-up was in the middle of saying that his wife had died, when he got the bum’s rush off the stage.  I’ve never seen that before.

Katherine Johnson, the real woman from Hidden Figures, made me cry.

Dakota Johnson is so bad-looking to begin with, and her filthy hair, with her ear sticking-out, made it so much worse.

The bit with the tour bus group was perfect. And went on for the correct length of time.

Who dressed Felicity Jones?  Her dress was awful, her hair was a mess, and why would she feature her too-white chest?!

The way they did the candy drops was brilliant.

I love Sunny Pawar, the kid from Lion.  He’s just adorable.  He barely even speaks English, yet he did a bit with Jimmy.

The guy who won for Best Live Action Short, for Sing, gave a perfect speech about raising kids right.

The guy who won Best Cinematographer looked great in his suit.

Kenneth Lonergan, who won for writing Manchester By The Sea, gave the perfect speech.

I was so happy for the Moonlight writers. I had heard Barry Jenkins speak earlier this year, and I know what winning that award meant to him.

The winner for Most Ill-Fitting Suit was Damien Chazelle.

Leonardo DiCaprio is more gorgeous than ever.

Emma Stone’s win is sooooo undeserved.  It happened because the women’s field was a weak crop this year.  Taraji P. Henson, who deserved to win, didn’t even get nominated!!! And they won’t give another one to Meryl Streep, no matter how much she deserves it. And, Isabelle Huppert, who perhaps deserved it the most, wouldn’t get it because she’s old and foreign. This category was such a shame, all the way around. Emma should not have even been nominated!!!

And, as much as you know I love sparkly eye make-up, Emma’s was awful.  It made her look like she was crying the whole time.

So, now we come to that bizarre ending. I had just written: “It’s ridiculous that the snoozefest that is La La Land won,” when it turned-out that they did not!!! Wow. What a turn of events. La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz handled it well, except for ripping the card from Warren Beatty‘s hand, which was the height of rudeness.

I had predicted on Twitter, before the show even started, that Moonlight would win Best Picture, so I was especially happy about that. When a win can make Samuel L. Jackson tear-up, you know it’s something special.

All in all, the winners were good enough. I was disappointed about only Emma Stone and any other wins for La La Land.  But I love that I was right-on with my prediction of Moonlight winning. [Note: Since I’m never going to do official reviews of any of these films, let me just say a few words about why I really did not like La La Land right now. For me to not be a fan of something that Ryan Gosling does is rare. That guy is a great dancer, but they gave him lame choreography, probably because Emma Stone can’t dance, and they didn’t want him to outshine her. And it’s supposed to be a musical, but that fact wanes badly after the first three numbers!]

But I must say that the two most full-of-baloney winners there were Emma Stone and Viola Davis. Emma thinks she’s amusing, and laughs at everything she says, (but she’s the only one chuckling,) and Viola tries so hard to be profound, and it’s just creepy. Mr. X said she accepted her win “as a character.” I see what he means. The only thing missing was her nose running into her mouth, which seems to happen in every role she does. (You’ll begin to notice that now.) And I hate that she crazily declared, “I became an artist, and thank God I did, because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.” Has she never heard of writers??? Whose words does she think she’s saying when she’s acting? She is so full of herself, but everyone is scared to say that because they’ll look racist or something. It has absolutely nothing to do with race or anything else like that; it’s just not being a fan of pompousness.

Whew—I feel better now. I had to get all those last parts off my chest. So, that’s it for my thoughts on the 2017 Oscars. Now I have to get back into bed, and try to get rid of my bronchitis. If only Jimmy Kimmel could have some elderberry oil drop down on me, I think I’d be on the road to recovery soon.