La La Land

A small budget indie movie about black queer romance was named Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday night. Let that sink in for a moment.

I’ve been saying it for months: It’s too bad there can only be one Best Picture winner.

The Oscars have long had surprising moments, but Sunday night just gave us the most insane moment in Academy Awards history. Moonlight won Best Picture, but only after presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly named La La Land the winner.

In what is no doubt the most insane moment in Oscars history, Moonlight won Best Picture only after it was wrongly announced that La La Land was the winner.

Emma Stone is now an Academy Award winner. The actress won her first Oscar for La La Land, beating out Meryl Streep and Isabelle Huppert (pretty much the French Meryl Streep) for Best Actress.

Whether you love it, hate it, or are maintaining a neutral stance on the La La Land culture war, you’ve got to admit Damien Chazelle pulled off something pretty fantastic with his modern day ode to classic musicals. From the choreography to the film’s stunning color palette, it’s hard to deny that the filmmaker crafted one beautiful movie. With that in mind, plus the Academy’s penchant for honoring movies about Hollywood, it makes sense that Chazelle won the Oscar for Best Director on Sunday night.

It’s no secret that Barack Obama is a total cinephile — last year he and Michelle named their favorite films of 2015 (The Martian and Inside Out, respectively), and a few months ago he even listed his favorite sci-fi movies (mostly the agreed-upon classics). Being the President comes with its fair share of perks, including first access to any new releases he wants to watch. Now we know what was on the list he requested for his swanky White House screening room.

Humor me for a moment — is Damien Chazelle‘s old-school romantic musical La La Land really all that far removed from the cinema of David Lynch? Like the avant-melodrama triumph Mulholland Dr., Chazelle’s film is obsessed with the artifice that defines both Los Angeles and the entertainment industry around which it was built. Both films revolve around a pair of people inexorably drawn to one another, linked even as they drift apart due to the vicissitudes of circumstance. Both Lynch and Chazelle are fond of stylistic breaks from reality, exploring a dreamlike or otherwise surreal plane beyond this dimension. Hell, “here’s to the ones who dream” might as well be the mission statement of Lynch’s entire filmography.

After months of hype and controversy, the big night is finally upon us. The red carpet has been rolled out, the votes have been cast, and host Jimmy Kimmel has rehearsed all his best Matt Damon jokes. At last, the 89th Academy Awards have arrived.

Sure, the Academy Awards are swanky and fun and tell us what the industry wants in a film, but what about what the people want? Well, as it turns out, when Fandango conducted a poll of 8,000 moviegoers nationwide, Oscar favorite La La Land didn‘t stand a chance against Hidden Figures.