Posted on 02/27/2017 2:55:33 AM PST by SkyPilot
In the most shocking mix-up in Oscars history, Moonlight won best picture at the Academy Awards — but only after presenter Faye Dunaway announced La La Land as the winner, setting off mass confusion inside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
“I want to tell you what happened,” co-presenter Warren Beatty explained after the mix-up was revealed. “I opened the envelope, and it said ‘Emma Stone, La La Land.’ That’s why I took such a long look at Faye and at you. I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“Well, I don’t know what happened. I blame myself for this,” Kimmel joked after the moment. “Let’s remember, it’s just an awards show. I mean, we hate to see people disappointed, but the good news is we got to see some extra speeches. We have some great movies. I knew I would screw this show up, I really did. Thank you for watching. I’m back to work tomorrow night on my regular show. I promise I’ll never come back. Good night!”
Speaking after the mix-up had been rectified, Moonlight director Barry Jenkins said, “Very clearly, very clearly in my dreams this could not be true. But to hell with my dreams. I’m done with it because this is true. Oh my goodness.”
He added a note of praise to his La La Land opponents: “And I have to say it is true. It’s not fake. We’ve been on the road with these guys for so long. My love to La La Land. My love to everybody. Man.”
After the Oscars, PricewaterhouseCoopers — which tabulates the Oscar votes — released a statement apologizing for the flub: “We sincerely apologize to Moonlight, La La Land, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement...
(Excerpt) Read more at ew.com ...
Serves them right. They puff themselves up with their moral posturing, and then they flub the most important award.
I didn't watch last night, but in looking at the results it seems that this year was all about making up for their "racist" actions last year. It was all about being politically correct this time around.
Hollywood doesn’t give an Oscar to the type of films I watch like God’s Not Dead so I don’t care about the Oscars. Those people have a lot of gall trying to tell Trump how to run the country, they can’t even run an awards show. The trouble behind the scenes was probably related to someone being high, trying to score with someone and not paying attention to doing their jobs, everyone wanted the show to be over at that point so they could get to the dinners and parties, a totally self-absorbed lifestyle.
“Moonlight” was about gay, black drug dealers? No wonder it won.
“This movie portends that Johnson’s calculations were requested by John Glenn, and that the “heroic” numbers crunching of Johnson was responsible (in a very large way) for the success of a significant event in the space program.”
In the movie, Johnson’s calculations (which were, in fact, requested by John Glenn) confirmed the trajectories produced by the computer, which Glenn didn’t trust. The movie did not portray her calculations as having “saved” Glenn’s orbital flight, in particular, or NASA, in general.
I don’t know what your high-school math courses were like, but in the movie a numerical approximation (Euler’s Method) for solving a system of differential equation was used to calculate the latitude and longitude at which an orbiting space capsule would land upon re-entry. Johnson had earlier co-authored a technical report at NASA on using such an approximation method for this problem.
I don’t have any “white guilt” about the racial discrimination of the era portrayed in the movie. I wasn’t old enough to have been responsible for it. But I am old enough to remember separate “white” and “colored” restrooms, public schools, and seating on public buses. That’s just the way it was in Virginia at the time, and the movie accurately portrays these facts and some of their unintended consequences. I can be opposed to the “race card” played by today’s race hustlers without burying my head in the sand about the indignities suffered *within my lifetime* by blacks simply because of their skin tone.
I read the book and watched the movie because it was set in my hometown, not because I wanted to see a movie about the overlooked contributions of blacks and women to the space program. “Hidden Figures” is not a “black” movie. I enjoyed it as a mostly accurate portrayal of the U.S. space program in the early 1960s, and the (until recently, largely) unpublicized role of black women in it. It’s a good (not great) film, and I urge you to go see it.
Typical of Hollywood.. they would screw up a free lunch at a Sunday school picnic.
In college I had four years of calculus and differential equations, and no, I still don’t want to see the movie.
I’m happy that you found some redeeming qualities movie Sam. However, I still believe it is revisionist history and propaganda.
I turned the TV off right after they announced La La Land, and missed the best part of the night! Dang it!!
I’m so glad I don’t know any of these movies.
“Typical of Hollywood.. they would screw up a free lunch at a Sunday school picnic.”
I watched “Get On Up,” the James Brown biopic from a few back, last weekend. The filmmakers managed to make James Brown and his music seem dull and uninteresting, of all things. I should have skipped the movie and watched videos of the man himself on YouTube.
“In college I had four years of calculus and differential equations ...”
I wasn’t asking about your math background. You initially said that the women portrayed in “Hidden Figures” were doing 10th grade math. I pointed out that some of the math in the movie involved numerical approximations of systems of differential equations. That wasn’t taught in the 10th grade at my high school.
You could be right.
You previously posted this to me:
I don’t know what your high-school math courses were like...
But let's get back to the point at hand.
I am not the only person on the planet who is saying that "Hidden Figures" was revisionist history and propaganda.
You stated that Glenn's reliance on Johnson was factual, as portrayed in the film.
The fact is, we don't know that.
And with Glenn’s death goes the possibility of refuting one of the stranger tales born in the Current Year and poised to become the definitive story of the Mercury and Apollo missions: the Christmas Day-scheduled movie Hidden Figures’ “untold true story” that black women were the real force behind America’s space exploration. In the book on which the movie is based, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly, Glenn is quoted as having said this of Katherine Johnson, the black female brain allegedly behind NASA’s greatest glories. “Get the girl to check the numbers,” said the astronaut. If she says the numbers are good, he told them, I’m ready to go.”
You also accused me of being "interested in skin tone." As I explained, I am not the one hyping race in this story. But race is the cornerstone of this movie, because that is what the writers, producers, and actors put out there. Further, the real Kathy Johnson was:
"...NASA’s website now reports that Katherine Johnson, a blue-eyed, light-skinned black female...
And, as the article I linked points out, there are many reasons to question not only the veracity, but accuracy of this movie's entire premise:
- Why isn’t Johnson mentioned in John Glenn’s John Glenn: A Memoir or Alan Shepard’s Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon?
- Why does Charles Murray not mention her in his seminal book on the Apollo program (co-authored with Katherine Murray), Apollo: Race to the Moon?
- Why is Johnson not mentioned in Tom Wolfe’s epic The Right Stuff,documenting the sensational story of NASA’s first astronaut group, the all-white Mercury 7.
- Why, especially oddly, is Johnson not mentioned in We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program.
- Why was Johnson not mentioned in either Jet or Ebony magazine, two black magazines that spent the 1960s and 1970s simultaneously lamenting the lack of blacks at NASA and celebrating any minor achievements of blacks in the space program.
- Why, given her alleged role in the Apollo 13 drama, does Johnson not appear in Jim Lovell’s autobiographical Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13(subsequently made into the Tom Hanks movie, Apollo 13).
- Why does Gene Kranz, the Flight Director of NASA famously played by Ed Harris in Apollo 13, fail to mention Katherine Johnson in his autobiography Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond?
- Why, perhaps most significantly, does Johnson not appear in Harlem Princess: The Story of Harry Delaney’s Daughter, the autobiography of Ruth Bates Harris? Harris, who took the job of Deputy Assistant Administrator for Equal opportunity for NASA in 1972, famously said, “I saw no minorities or women as astronauts. Could I help make a difference?” Harris waged a war to get more blacks involved with NASA, which was a paltry 5.6 percent non-white in 1973 versus a government agency average of 20 percent minority. [Societal Impact of Spaceflight, 2007, PDF]
- Why does Johnson not appear in Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories, by the black actress Nichelle Nichols, who played the part of Lt. Uhura in the iconic TV series Star Trek? Nichols waged a personal crusade against the overwhelming white nature of NASA, giving a speech in 1977, “New Opportunities for the Humanization of Space,”lamenting how white the space agency was and how this was dehumanizing to nonwhites.
Has Johnson's contribution been exaggerated and used for political purposes? Most specifically to fill a racial agenda?
Yes, I believe it has.
If you want to lionize this movie, hey, good for you.
I would caution you, however, that you are proving the point that propaganda is powerful and has the ability to influence people to conclusions that are not always factual.
You said you read the book and watched the movie. Your spirited defense of both clearly means (to me) that the music, the compelling story, the images, the acting - all influenced your conclusions.
And I believe that "Hidden Figures" is, at is heart - a piece of political and racial politics fiction.
Completely agree. It looked totally set up.
And wasn’t it written by a white woman?
Thanks for the info-Best movie of the year.
But the La La Land people got on stage and started speaking. In the future need communication between accountant and control room and host.
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