The ninety-sixth Academy Awards are under way in Los Angeles, and The New Yorker is covering all the action. Here on our live blog, we’re publishing updates as the prizes are announced, acceptance speeches are delivered, and fellow-nominees try to smile graciously when someone else’s name is called. The magazine’s culture writers Vinson Cunningham, Alexandra Schwartz, and Naomi Fry will illuminate key moments as the festivities unfold, intermittently joined from the red carpet and inside the Dolby Theatre by their colleague Michael Schulman. (To see everything Schulman is up to this evening, check out his stories on The New Yorker’s Instagram account.)
What does the evening portend? “Oppenheimer” enters as the favorite for many of the major awards, including Best Picture; Best Director, for Christopher Nolan; and Best Actor, for Cillian Murphy as the titular scientist, the so-called father of the atomic bomb. The race for Best Actress appears to be a showdown between Emma Stone, as a lab-created woman learning about the world in “Poor Things,” and Lily Gladstone, who could become the first Native American woman to win an Academy Award, for her performance in “Killers of the Flower Moon” (a film based, we might add, on a book by the New Yorker staff writer David Grann). Although the Academy overlooked “Barbie” in two major categories—neglecting to nominate Margot Robbie, as the title character, and Greta Gerwig, the director—Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera look to be contenders for Best Supporting Actor and Actress, and the movie earned not one but two nominations for Best Song.
Stick with us throughout the night as envelopes are opened, winners are named, and no slaps are heard (we hope) around the world.