By Cesar Zafra
Yesterday’s Oscars started with Justin Timberlake’s performance of “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” which was nominated for Best Original Song. This year, Jimmy Kimmel hosted the awards show, doing a good job of keeping the crowd entertained and riled up with witty humor and the right amount of satirical jabs.
The highlight of the 2016 Oscars was the social media hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, criticizing the lack of diversity among nominees. This year, the pendulum swung forward with the nomination of seven non-black actors including Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, Octavia Spencer, and Dev Patel and black actors nominated in every acting category.
Inevitably, politics found its way into the speeches by presenters and Kimmel himself. However, the messages all showed a common theme of acceptance and condemned borders.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, President of the Academy, summarized the atmosphere well in her remark: “Tonight is proof that art has no borders, art has no single language, and art does not belong to a single faith. For the power of art is that it shares all these things.”
Kimmel enhanced this sentiment this by live-tweeting the 45th president “hey @realDonaldTrump u up?” accompanied by “#Merylsayshi,” in another tweet. It was clear that divisive ideology was not welcome.
Before Katherine Johnson’s, the NASA physicist represented in the film Hidden Figures, appearance on stage the audience received a little surprise from above; candy bags flowed from the ceiling. Later on, Kimmel also surprised a random, lucky group of Hollywood tour bus riders by taking them directly into the Oscars show, greeting and even receiving gifts from the star-studded audience. More candy came from the air.
An Oscar-star version of Kimmel’s Celebrities Read Mean Tweets aired, including nominees Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, and icons such as Natalie Portman and Samuel L. Jackson. With laughs from the crowd, celebrities read degrading, harsh, and horribly funny criticisms about themselves— one of which compared Tilda Swinton’s appearance to that of a feline.
The show ended with a nail-biting Best Picture win for La La Land, until it wasn’t so. In a Steve Harvey-esque mistake, Faye Dunaway read the red card for Best Actress, which had Emma Stone’s name on it, thus leading her to believe La La Land was the winner. The correction was painfully made after the crew’s acceptance speech, and so, Moonlight was crowned the king without the initial and non-renewable glamorous glitter that comes with an Oscar.
Now, to what you came for. Here is a list of all the 2017 Academy Award winners:
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight.
Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling: Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini, and Christopher Nelson, Suicide Squad.
Best Costume Design: Colleen Atwood, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Best Documentary Feature: Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow, O.J.: Made in America.
Sound Editing and Mixing: Sylvain Bellemare, Arrival.
Achievement in Sound Mixing: Kevin O’Connell, Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie, and Peter Grace, Hacksaw Ridge.
Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis, Fences.
Best Foreign Language Film: Asghar Farhadi, The Salesman.
Best Animated Short Film: Alan Barillaro and Marc Sondheimer, Piper.
Best Animated Feature Film: Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Clark Spencer, Zootopia.
Achievement in Production Design: David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, La La Land.
Achievement in Visual Effects: Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones, and Dan Lemmon, The Jungle Book.
Achievement in Film Editing: John Gilbert, Hacksaw Ridge.
Best Documentary Short Subject: Orlando Von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara, The White Helmets.
Best Live Action Short Film: Kristof Deák and Anna Udvardy, Sing.
Best Cinematography: Linus Sandgren, La La Land.
Best Original Score: Justin Hurwitz, La La Land.
Best Original Song: Justin Hurwitz, Benj Hasek and Justin Paul, La La Land.
Best Original Screenplay: Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney, Moonlight.
Best Directing: Damien Chazelle, La La Land.
Best Actor: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea.
Best Actress: Emma Stone, La La Land.
Best Picture: Adele Romanski, Dede Gardner, and Jeremy Kleiner, Moonlight.