One of the Best Oscar Awards Show Ever

The giant snafu over the Best Picture Award reminded me a little bit of "A Chorus Line," when the director asks several of the dancers who've auditioned to step forward and then, after they think they've been chosen to be in his show, thanks them and dismisses them!  Those who thought they hadn't won are now the winners!  But that was deliberate.  Last night's snafu was NOT! 

But I disagree with Mick La Salle, who says  the 2017 Oscar ceremony will be remembered for nothing but the huge error about The Best Picture Award.  There were many memorable moments, even one resulting from the terrible snafu, when a very gracious Jordan Horowitz of the "La La Land" crew handed over the Oscar he thought he'd won saying "I'm gonna be really proud to hand this to my friends for 'Moonlight.'" 

Mick La Salle thinks the Best Picture Award error shows that "we can't even get the Oscars right," but we DID get the Oscars right.  The Academy chose "Moonlight" instead of  "La La Land" for Best Picture and made other good choices.    We'll remember those.  We'll remember Mahershala Ali's speech, including his thanking his teachers and professors because, contrary to what Viola Davis said,  artists aren't "the  only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life."  We'll remember the appearance of Former NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, an inspiration for "Hidden Figures" and the trumping of Trump, including Kimmel's references to the "over-rated Meryl Streep."    We'll remember Benj Pasek's tribute to his mother who "let me quit the JCC soccer league to be in a school musical" as he dedicated his Oscar "to all the kids who sing in the rain and all the moms who let them."  We'll remember seeing Lin Manuel Miranda's without having to pay, as Kimmel quipped, ten thousand dollars.  We'll remember that it was Iranian-American  astronaut Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist, the first female Muslim, and first person of Iranian descent  in space,  who accepted the Oscar for the absent Asghar Farhadi when "Salesman" won Best foreign-language film.  Let's hope too that we remember the part of the Farhadi's speech that Mick La Salle does not quote:

"Dividing the world into the 'us' and 'our enemies' categories creates fear. A deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression."

The Oscar ceremony of this year may be remembered as one of the best ever if we choose to remember what matters most.