89th Annual Oscars

Having seen most of the contenders this year I watched the awards ceremonies last night, which I don't usually.  Jimmy Kimmel actually brought a little levity to the proceedings, and there were a couple of fairly surprising twists.  The sets were elegant without being overly Las Vegas, and for the most part the acceptance speeches (and ads!) were short, heartfelt and provided subtle well-chosen barbs at Trump.

One big foo-fah was the final, and biggest, Oscar (Best Picture) where Warren Beatty & Faye Dunaway came onstage carrying the wrong envelope.  Their envelope contained a card that announced Emma Stone as Best Actress in "La La Land."  So after momentary confusion from these two old geezers, they announced "La La Land" as Best Picture.  Cast & crew ascended the stage, started giving speeches and thanking the Academy.

We knew something was wrong when a director, wearing a headset, joined them and started reading the cards they were holding.  

All of a sudden the director of "La La Land" took the mic and said there'd been a mistake.  The winner was actually "Moonlight."  He very graciously said something about how great "Moonlight" was and he was pleased to give his Oscar to them.  A lot of confusion on-stage, more speeches from the "Moonlight" cast & crew, Beatty showed the errant card to the camera.

Weird finish.

"La La Land" won too many Oscars -- wife saw it, said it looked like a high school musical -- and the numerous clips played every time they won something did nothing to dispel her conclusion.  Of all the films nominated for awards this year, most were what I call "small stories" -- stories of a single person or a small group of people, with no higher purpose than to tell their story.  "Lion," "Manchester By The Sea, "Moonlight," "Hidden Figures,"  "Florence Foster Jenkins," "La La Land," "Hacksaw Ridge" -- all small stories.

The only film on the dais which was a Big Story was "Arrival."  It was a thinker movie, not a story movie.  It won Sound Design or something like that.  I would have awarded it much more.  Especially Amy Adams -- she deserved Best Actress by a mile.  She was robbed.

I think the last time I watched the Oscars award show, Eva Marie Saint won an Oscar.

My brother-in-law was in "the industry" and used to have a vote for the Oscars. He got numerous free VHS tapes in the mail, and then DVDs of course. He told me he would send me any of them he thought were worth the postage. Never got one.

_Howard wrote:

I think the last time I watched the Oscars award show, Eva Marie Saint won an Oscar.

Her only Oscar was for On The Waterfront in 1954.  You old.

1954? Yeah, that sounds about right. I do remember it was black and white (green, actually).

I don't even REMEMBER 1954.

That would have been only the 2nd year the Oscars were televised, BTW.

Coincidentally, that was also the second year we had a television.

We got our first TV, an Emerson I believe?, about 1957.  Our first color set was a Heathkit my dad spent about a year assembling, probably 1968-1969.  He kept that set until at least 1991.  It worked pretty darn well.

He also built a Heathkit oscilloscope, volt meter and waveform generator.  And a Dynakit preamplifier and Heathkit tubed power amplifier.

Garrard turntable

and a single Belle Kilpsch cornerhorn built from plans in Popular Science.

The speaker was massive. We left it in the house when we sold it.

At one point we had something like this.  It had a radio and record player built into either side of the TV.

1954 was the year I was born. So I'm told.

You should be able to check that, using your driver's license.