Oscar Insider 2017 By Adrienne Papp

Okay, let’s start with the obvious. On Sunday night the Academy Award for Best Picture was bungled in an unprecedented way. As Fay Dunaway and Warren Beatty stood at the podium to announce the winner among the nine choices for best movie of the year, human error interceded somehow the wrong information was presented and “La La Land” was announced as best picture of the year.

Except that it wasn’t, The Academy had awarded the Oscar for Best Picture to “Moonlight,” and as confusion reined the look of shock and disbelief on the faces of the crowd at the Kodak Theater was something never before seen at an Oscar event. Turns out someone at PricewaterhouseCooper had handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty, who handed it off to Dunaway who saw the credit for Emma Stone in “La La Land” and announced the musical as winner of Best Picture.

On Hollywood’s biggest night of the year, when things were finally sorted out and the confusion onstage settled “Moonlight” claimed the Oscar for best picture and the deposed “La La Land” won in six categories, including best director for Damien Chazelle and best actress for Emma Stone. “Moonlight” ended up with three major wins, including for Mahershala Ali in the supporting actor category.

Other than that, things went pretty smoothly. In other key acting awards, Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”) took home the Oscar for Best Actor and Viola Davis (“Fences”) won for Best Supporting Actress. Davis gave the standout speech of the night, praising the job of artists as gravediggers, who “exhume” the stories from the past and give them new life.

This year, the academy rewarded more African American actors and filmmakers in more categories than it ever had in a single year. In addition to the stunning upset best picture win for the “Moonlight” (the dramatic story of a gay African American boy growing up in poverty in Miami), the ceremonies had a record-breaking number of awards go to black actors and filmmakers.

In other key awards, Iran’s Asghar Farhadi took home the win for best foreign-language film for “The Salesman,” and Disney’s “Zootopia” was awarded a statuette for best animated feature.

The other notable storyline from the night was how the show addressed America’s political climate. Jimmy Kimmel tapped into the wealth of political material created by the president’s first month in office on numerous occasions. The most memorable political reference was the standing ovation for Meryl Streep, whom the president called “overrated” on Twitter.

In what amounted to a memorable prank, Kimmel also arranged for a local tour bus to be led up to the Kodak Theater, and the unsuspecting tourists were led through the festivities and mingled with Hollywood A-list celebrities. In another moment of levity, parachutes of candy dropped on to the crowd, who grabbed up the little packages of Red Vines, Junior Mints and doughnuts. As glamorous as it was I still prefer what the stars do: eating healthy and staying youthful and ageless for as long as possible. I am proud to be the founder of  Youthful&Ageless.   After all,  this event, and many others, show that the stars and those on the silver screen are the first ones who want to avoid aging at all cost.

Kimmel’s most sustained antics of  the night came from his ongoing pranking of Matt Damon, who took the jokes surprisingly well, especially when Kimmel took the baton and had the orchestra play Damon off the stage.

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