Moonlight

It’s been one heck of an awards season. For months we’ve speculated and debated the biggest movies of 2016 and on Sunday night the Oscars handed us the craziest twist of all time. After La La Land was named the Best Picture winner before immediately losing to the correct winner, Moonlight, we all know to never turn off our TVs before the credits roll on the Oscars broadcast.

Did you see Moonlight, the Oscar-anointed Best Picture which also happens to be the actual best picture of the year? No? Why not? The common answers include “looked super sad” (accurate, but shouldn’t be a deterrent), “looked boring” (empirically incorrect), “couldn’t relate to it” (probably a little racist, a little homophobic, or both), “been busy lately” (get your priorities in order), and moreso than any other, “wasn’t playing near me.” That last one is hard to argue with, as A24’s October release did leave a lot of communities bereft of access to Moonlight. But as this film’s mass-marketability has become evident with high-profile Oscar wins and a $26 million gross on a budget of $1.5 million, A24 has smartly moved to spread the love.

[Bonnie and Clyde trailer voice]: They’re old, they kind of hate each other, and they read envelopes. Since Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land as the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture on Sunday night, everyone‘s been looking for an answer as to how such a massive goof could come to pass. Blame has been passed around like a hot potato, with fault assigned to Beatty, Dunaway, some tweeting nitwit from the accounting firm that tabulates the votes, the person who lays down the envelopes, and just for good measure, a cold and uncaring god. But now the trenchant, Spotlightesque journalists at TMZ claim to have the full story behind just what went down.

In the latest development in envelopegate, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has finally issued an apology. But before we get there, lets do a quick recap.

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.

Mahershala Ali has been swooping up accolades and nominations for months now, all leading up to his big win on Oscar night. On Sunday the Moonlight actor took home the prize for Best Supporting Actor for his role as drug dealer Juan.

For a lot of casual moviegoers, the Independent Spirit Awards are just the weird little awards show that takes place in a big tent the night before the Academy Awards. Maybe, as you’ll see in the opening monologue above, the comedy is a little raunchier and more NSFW than we expected. Maybe the audience seems a bit more drunk than we’re used to. But for those of us who only catch snippets or highlights of acceptance speeches on social media, it can be hard to understand its place in the overall award scene.