The 2019 Oscars are tonight, so let’s talk about the movies!
First up, The New Yorker has a compilation of the best writing they’ve put out in recent weeks about the nominated films. This one alone will have you prepared to speak knowledgeably about all the nominees, even if you skip out on the actual awards ceremony. And here’s The New Yorker’s run-down of this year’s Oscar-related scandals, as well as a brief look backwards at the scandals that came before, including one involving the 1961 film The Alamo. (Unrelated to the Oscar’s, but this Guernica article examines the truer, darker history of the much-mythologized Alamo and its ongoing role in propagating racism).
Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is already riding on many firsts: it’s the first Netflix-produced film to be nominated for Best Picture, and its female lead, Yalitza Aparicio, is the first indigenous Mexican woman to be nominated for Best Actress. If it wins, it will be the first foreign-language film to take home Best Picture in the entire 90 years of the awards ceremony’s history. In this profile of the director, The Atlantic examines the spotlight given to female characters and their stories in much of Cuarón’s work. And Yaritza Aparicio herself opens up to Harper’s Bazaar about the making of the film, her home country, and what she imagines for the future.
Meanwhile, LitHub speculates over potential nominations for a fictional Academy Awards ceremony for books and has University of Montana MFA alum and former CutBank editor Andrew Martin nominated in the category of Best Debut for his novel Early Work. We can toast to that.
The price of nomination, however, is to prepare a speech, and lately they’re expected to include an incisive or inspiring political commentary. While we wait to see what tonight brings, the good people over at McSweeney’s have unearthed a long-lost acceptance speech written by Sophocles for Oedipus Rex in which he praises the rise in women’s stories brought to the stage by men and reminds us of our democratic right to be entertained. Given McSweeney’s other piece listing the many things that outnumber women who’ve been nominated for Best Director (including onscreen Charlize Theron deaths), sounds like Sophocles was describing the Oscars’ ceremony itself.