I was able to catch the tail end of the Oscar Awards presentation on Wednesday morning, (Tuesday night in Hollywood) just when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty were called to present the Best Picture Award.

They were given the honor of awarding the final Oscar of the night to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the movie they starred in 1967, "Bonnie and Clyde". 

As I watched them walk to the podium and started speaking, I can't help but notice how they aged, how slow they moved and spoke. Then I realized that Warren Beatty, born in 1937, is only a few years older than me. That should also make me old. A depressing thought.

Then the mix up happened. Faye Dunaway announced La La Land was the Best Picture winner. Only to be corrected later that the winner was Moonlight. I thought that maybe their age somehow caused the mistake.

But it was not. The fellow in charge of the envelopes was distracted as he was star-struck and tweeting a picture of Emma Stone backstage. Warren Beatty was handed a wrong envelope.

I told my wife of what happened at the Oscars and that made her curious and wanted to see all the movies nominated for the Best Picture Award. I have downloaded these movies and are on file in my pc's hard drive.

She wanted to watch Moonlight first, but I told her the movie is about a young, poor, black gay, growing up in an environment of drug abuse, alcoholism and violence..

Not very uplifting. So we watched La La Land instead. This is a song-and-dance movie, the kind that will make you "feel good". Or so I thought.

Here's a review of La La Land:.

"Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars..

But, as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart."

Ripped them apart indeed. I don't want to be a spoiler so I won't tell you the rest of the movie.

La La Land reminded me of another Warren Beatty movie released earlier in 1961, Splendor in the Grass, with the lovely, Natalie Wood. Both movies are about young sweethearts, intensely in love only to end up in the arms of others.

Here's a review of Splendor in the Grass:

"Bud (Warren Beatty) and his high school sweetheart, Deanie (Natalie Wood), are weighed down by their parents' oppressive expectations, which threaten the future of their relationship.

Deanie's mother and Bud's father caution their children against engaging in a sexual relationship, but for opposing reasons: Deanie's mother thinks Bud won't marry a girl with loose morals, while Bud's father is afraid of marriage and pregnancy that would ruin Bud's future at Yale."

Here's description of the movie ending:

"Her friends drive Deanie out to meet Bud. He is now married to Angelina, they have an infant son, "Bud Jr.," and Angelina is expecting another child. Deanie lets Bud know that she is going to marry John, who is now a doctor in Cincinnati.

During their brief reunion, Deanie and Bud realize that both must accept what life has thrown at them, as Bud says, "What's the point? You gotta take what comes." They each relate that they "don't think about happiness very much anymore."

As Deanie leaves with her friends, Bud only seems partially satisfied by the direction his life has taken. After the others are gone, he reassures Angelina, who has realized that Deanie was once the love of Bud's life. Driving away, Deanie's friends ask her if she is still in love with Bud.

She realizes that she still loves him warmly, but that they can never recover that blazing love of youth which they once had. She does not answer her friends, but Deanie's voice is heard reciting four lines from a Wordsworth poem: