It seemed improbable that anything could top the dramatic ups and downs of 2016, but 2017 found a way. And for Hollywood, it was a year where it often felt like the entire town was on fire (and we’re not just referring to the annual wild fires that smolder in the hills).  Especially in the second half, where it seemed like a day didn’t go by when the facade of a favorite actor, director or television personality was justifiably shattered into a million pieces.

Continue reading The Biggest Entertainment News Stories Of 2017 at The Playlist.

There are often serious disadvantages to be labeled an Oscar-bait picture. The perception of being a movie greenlit partially with the intent of earning Academy Award nominations (because let’s be frank, it’s always about making money first from a studio perspective) can be a heavy burden to bear. In many ways, it’s something Christopher Nolan has dealt with ever since he burst onto the scene in 2000 with “Memento” and earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination the next year.

Continue reading ‘Dunkirk’ And Christopher Nolan Have Oscars In Their Sights at The Playlist.

The 89th Academy Awards will go down in history for the inspiring choice of “Moonlight” as Best Picture and the mess that found “La La Land” mistakenly announced as the winner beforehand.  On this week’s podcast, Dan Fienberg, the television critic of The Hollywood Reporter (and also our first returning guest), and I break down the telecast and that moment which has become a modern Zapruder film.  A mistake so unexpected that the more you watch it the more details you catch.

Continue reading 4 Quadrant Podcast: Breaking Down The Oscars Best Picture Mistake With Dan Fienberg at The Playlist.

It’s the biggest bungle in Oscars history, so it only follows that the Hollywood trades are covering it with all the intensity of a congressional hearing. And while it might not have all the sizzle of a Washington-based scandal — this one involves mishandled envelopes and tweeting — the players are high-profile, and an entire industry has been left embarrassed. In case you’re just visiting from the planet Mars, you’ll know that on Sunday night, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway‘s presentation of Best Picture was marred when “La La Land” was initially announced, only for the trophy to be taken away and given to “Moonlight” instead.

Continue reading Oscars 2017: Jimmy Kimmel, Damien Chazelle & Producer Michael De Luca React To Best Picture Bungle at The Playlist.

It has been a rough week for The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Best Picture bungling is all anyone can talk about from the Sunday night’s ceremonies, and Warren Beatty himself is demanding that clearer answers about what happened, while many are wondering what the repercussions might be.

The Academy has finally broken their silence, with Cheryl Boone Isaacs telling the Associated Press that Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz, the accountants responsible for handling the envelopes, have been barred from future Oscars.

Continue reading The Academy Says Accountants Responsible For Best Picture Fiasco Barred From Future Oscars & Apologies For In Memoriam Error at The Playlist.

Playing out with all the intrigue of a political scandal, the fallout from the Best Picture fiasco at the Oscars on Sunday night continues. PricewaterhouseCoopers Managing Partner Brian Cullinan is getting most of the heat for allowing the wrong envelope to wind up in the hands of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Just prior to the Best Picture winner being announced, Cullinan was backstage tweeting a picture of Emma Stone, who had just won Best Actress — but as the USA Today reports, that might’ve been a major breach of protocol.

Continue reading Warren Beatty Wants Answers From The Academy About The Oscars Best Picture Fiasco at The Playlist.

Yes, we know the Oscars were three very long days ago, but there is much to unpack beyond the whole Best Picture envelope fiasco. The awards season in general was not short on controversy, most of it landing on “The Birth Of A Nation” director Nate Parker, who saw the frontrunner status of his film implode when details surrounding his 2001 trial for rape resurfaced (he was acquitted), and it was learned that his accuser later committed suicide.

Continue reading Best Actor Oscar Winner Casey Affleck Addresses Sexual Harassment Allegations at The Playlist.

Something that has actually been lost in the entire Best Picture envelope mix-up over the past two days is a pretty monumental fact about this year’s winner, “Moonlight.” Barry Jenkins’ acclaimed drama is the first gay movie to ever win Best Picture. That’s, um, sort of a big deal.

Yes, “Moonlight” is many things but it’s profoundly a gay movie. Just like “Carol,” “Milk,” “The Kids Are All Right” and “Brokeback Mountain” are.

Continue reading Your Daily Reminder: ‘Moonlight’ Is The First LGBTQ Movie To Win Best Picture at The Playlist.

It wasn’t the best way to win Best Picture, but Barry Jenkins and the folks behind “Moonlight“ handled it with class, even if the biggest moment in their career was marred by “envelope gate.” It’s been a helluva journey for Jenkins and co. ever since the film first unspooled last fall, and undoubtedly everyone is still spinning a bit. But in the clearer light of day and away from the glitz and intensity of the Oscars, Jenkins reveals what he would’ve said on that stage had things gone smoothly.

Continue reading ‘Moonlight’ Director Barry Jenkins Reveals The Best Picture Speech He Would’ve Given at The Playlist.

Sunday night’s Oscars ended in one seismic Hollywood event that largely obliterated the memory of any earlier tremors. But some of those lesser quakes may actually turn out to have more lasting consequences than the Best Picture announcement omnishambles (our costly, impractical, left-field suggestion for how to avoid a similar cock-up in future? Color-coded envelopes). Among the less sexy but potentially more game-changing records broken at the 89th ceremony was this little nugget: 2017 saw the first Academy Awards at which movies financed by streaming services gained the industry’s highest honor.

Continue reading Netflix, Amazon, ‘The Irishman’ & The Academy: Oscars In The Age Of Streaming at The Playlist.

Nobody knew the Oscars could be so complicated. One of the biggest flubs in the show’s history — “La La Land” being mistakenly awarded Best Picture — is still being felt, and while the moment does have some silver linings, and shouldn’t overshadow the monumental achievement of “Moonlight,” there’s still the sense that there’s some explaining to do, and repercussions to follow. And the The Academy is promising just that.

Continue reading Academy Apologizes For Oscars “Envelope Gate” at The Playlist.

Honestly, when I decided to attend the Amazon Studios viewing party with a number of industry friends I wasn’t sure it was going to be the happiest of settings. By my own predictions “Manchester by the Sea” would only win one award (Original Screenplay) and many thought even that had become something of a reach. It was expected to be a close call between “Fences'” Denzel Washington and ‘Manchester”s Casey Affleck for Best Actor and the only real lock – if you can call it that – was “The Salesman” winning Foreign Language Film.

Continue reading A Tale Of Two Parties: Oscar Night With Amazon Studios And Lionsgate at The Playlist.

We’ve covered last night’s stunner of an Oscars ceremony from a whole bunch of angles — from the Best & Worst of the ceremony and all the acceptance speeches to the reasons why “Moonlight” picked up the top prize — but we haven’t really gone in depth into the major thing everyone’s talking about it today: the unprecedented balls-up that saw “La La Land” announced as Best Picture, its producers give their speeches, only to announce from the stage that actually, “Moonlight” had won.

Continue reading Why The 2017 Best Picture Fiasco Was One Of The Very Worst & Very Best Oscar Moments Ever at The Playlist.

Figures — hidden or not — do not lie, and nor do they get envelopes mixed up on stage at the Dolby Theater on what is, without hyperbole, the single most important annually-recurring event known to humankind. With the general kerfuffle around last night’s Oscars just beginning to die down, we’re putting our usual very rigorous spin on the events in the hope that stripping things down to their bare numerical essentials will help us all through this confusing and difficult time.

Continue reading The 2017 Oscars By The Numbers at The Playlist.

Yes, the entire world knows “Moonlight” was the huge upset shocker of last night’s 89th Annual Academy Awards ceremony. Though there’s obviously a huge argument to be made that the biggest surprise of the night was the painful mix up itself. Still, as we continue our comprehensive post-mortem on the Oscars, we analyze the winners and losers, what films were snubbed and what surprises the evening had in store.

Continue reading Oscars 2017: The Biggest Snubs & Surprises, Minus ‘Moonlight’ Of Course at The Playlist.

It’s only because it came hot on the heels of one of the biggest shocks in the near-90 year history of the Academy Awards — that the wrong name was read out, and “La La Land” had not, in fact, won Best Picture — that “Moonlight” taking the top prize last night isn’t being appreciated as the biggest Oscar surprise in over a decade.

Continue reading Oscars 2017: Why ‘Moonlight’ Beat ‘La La Land’ To Win Best Picture at The Playlist.

Product placement at the Oscars was prominent this year than in recent memory, and it wasn’t just the Junior Mints raining from the sky. The commercials airing during the ABC broadcast notably saw the Academy teaming with Rolex for a spot that “celebrated cinema” by crudely dropping the watch in a bunch of classic films. But perhaps even more questionable was the alignment with Walmart.

READ MORE: The Best & The Worst Of The 2017 Oscars

“Behind Every Receipt, There’s A Great Story” went the campaign that saw Antoine Fuqua, Marc Forster, and Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg team up for a trio of short films, all inspired by a receipt from the store containing bananas, batteries, paper towels, a scooter, wrapping paper, and video baby monitor.

Continue reading Oscars 2017: Antoine Fuqua, Marc Forster And Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg Direct Walmart Sponsored Short Films at The Playlist.

Well, that was certainly an Oscar ceremony. A long and relatively safe Oscar season looked to be culminating in a long and relatively safe evening, until a perfect storm of human error led to an unforgettable/mortifying/thrilling moment of live TV, and one weirdly fitting for a time in human history when everything seems to have gone bugnuts crazy.

It’s destined to be a ceremony remembered for being the one where two Best Picture winners were announced, but as ever, there were plenty of highs and lows beyond that, so beyond, you’ll find the Worst & Best of the 2017 Academy Awards (leading with worst, because, well, there’s some big stuff we’d have to get to first).

Continue reading The Best & Worst Of The 2017 Oscars at The Playlist.

Last night, something rare emerged at the Oscars: class. All season long, Film Twitter has engaged in an ugly battle pitting Team “Moonlight” versus Team “La La Land,” a fracas that the makers of either film have never engaged in. Even with the Best Picture mixup, the makers of “Moonlight” and “La La Land” were gracious to each other in both victory and defeat. But it appears that Sony Pictures Classics didn’t get the memo.

Continue reading Sony Pictures Classics Exec Says Oscar Buzz For Foreign Film Winner ‘The Salesman’ Is “Fake News” at The Playlist.

It’s not the Oscars without a big of song, and this year, with “La La Land” entering the show with a historic 14 nominations, it was only natural that the show kicked off with a big musical number.

Justin Timberlake got the night going with “Can’t Stop The Feeling,” and the lively performance paved the way for the rest of the musical numbers, which were mostly solid.

Continue reading Oscars 2017: Justin Timberlake’s Opening Song, In Memoriam Tribute & Musical Highlights at The Playlist.

Hosting the Oscars is generally speaking a pretty thankless task. By and large, the format and length of the show, and the often safe writing, doesn’t make it easy for anybody to knock it out of the park. And while Jimmy Kimmel didn’t hit a homerun, he mostly handled himself well as last night’s MC.

READ MORE: The Best & The Worst Of The 2017 Oscars

Part of the reason Kimmel managed to hold his own was that he didn’t go off brand all that much, so if you’re already a fan, it was easy to sit back and let him carry you through the night.

Continue reading Oscars 2017: Jimmy Kimmel’s Opening Monologue, Matt Damon Tribute, Mean Tweets & More Highlights at The Playlist.

They snicker. They roll their eyes. The world’s filmmaking elite or those that think they are part of it will dismiss the Academy Awards without a moments hesitation. They will claim the Palm d’Or handed out at the Cannes Film Festival is more prestigious. Being named the Best Picture from a lauded critics group or poll of cinephile film critics is a higher honor. They’ll laugh at Best Picture winners such as “The King’s Speech,” “The Artist” or “Argo” as evidence that the Oscars aren’t true artistic cinema.

Continue reading Ignore The Mixup: ‘Moonlight’s Best Picture Win Is A Pivotal Moment In Oscar History at The Playlist.

The mistake that will haunt the Oscars telecast for decades. Maybe.

Like out of some sort of fan fiction, “La La Land” was announced by accident as the Best Picture winner for 2017 (although you’ll be able to argue for years whether presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were at fault for not asking why they had a duplicate envelope and winner for Best Actress in their hands).

Continue reading Statement From The Academy About The ‘Moonlight’ Best Picture Screw Up at The Playlist.

The film world is still recovering from Best Picture blunder unlike anything the Oscars has seen, but let’s not let that overshadow the rest of the night.

The evening was not short on inspirational speeches, one of the most powerful coming from someone who wasn’t even there: Asghar Farhadi. The Iranian filmmaker won Best Foreign Film for “The Salesman,” and engineer and the first female space tourist Anousheh Ansari, accepted the Oscar from his behalf, read from a prepared statement from the director who spoke about against Trump’s “inhumane law” regarding the Muslim ban.

Continue reading Oscars 2017: All The Acceptance Speech Highlights & Best Picture Blunder at The Playlist.

Well, that was something. As per usual, the Oscars were a marathon, and it was the very last category that provided the biggest spark the show has seen in decades, and maybe the most embarrassing moment in Warren Beatty‘s life.

The show trudged along into Best Picture to cap off the night, with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of “Bonnie & Clyde,” coming out to present the winner.

Continue reading Oscars 2017: ‘Moonlight’ Surprise Best Picture Winner, ‘La La Land’ Wins 6 at The Playlist.