Oscars’ focus ‘on politics’ led to best picture snafu

According to various recaps of the bungle, Ruiz handed presenter Leonardo DiCaprio her copy of the Best Actress victor envelope just before he walked onstage to give Emma Stone the award.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says two accountants responsible for the best picture mixup at the 2017 Oscars won’t be allowed back.

Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz have been banned from the Oscars as the scapegoats in the best picture announcement mix-up that marred the final dramatic moments of the Academy Awards on Sunday.

Officials with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the longtime Oscars accounting firm, have since apologized for the error.

PwC said early on Monday it took full responsibility and apologised to the casts and crews of La La Land and Moonlight.

“This was a movie about love, and I was lucky enough to fall in love while making it”, Chazelle said, also thanking his college roommate at Harvard University, Justin Hurwitz, who won Oscars for scoring “La La Land” and working on “City of Stars”, which won the award for best original song. The Academy has been a client of PwC for 83 years, and that has included managing the ballots for the Academy Awards.

“The Academy has launched a full-scale review of its relationship with PwC but it is very complicated”, the source said.

They are also barred from handing out envelopes containing winners’ names at the prestigious awards ceremony.

Most presenters enter stage right. Beatty was hesitant in naming the victor and Dunaway took the envelope and mistakenly announced La La Land was the best picture instead of actual victor Moonlight.

“Some Republicans and Trump supporters said over social media that they would not watch the show because they expected it to be nothing more than Trump bashing, with some using the hashtag “#NoOscarsForMe”. The Academy might attempt to get a price break, telling PWC, ‘You have to take a hit. It’s not a headline that highlights their artistic achievement; it focuses more on how nicely one of them acted on that stage.

Trump was mocked mercilessly by several celebrities and host Jimmy Kimmel during the Sunday (26 February) night awards show. Roughly two minutes later, “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz took the microphone to acknowledge that a mistake had been made, and “Moonlight” was the real victor. “He is very upset about this mistake”, PwC chairman Tim Ryan told Variety.

“He feels very, very awful and frightful”, Ryan said. “I thought, ‘This is very odd because it says “best actress” on the card.’ And I felt that maybe there was some sort of misprint”.

– USA immigration authorities are barring entry to a 21-year-old Syrian cinematographer who worked on the documentary short nominee “The White Helmets”, about the nation’s civil war.