Your 2013 Academy Awards Reading List!

This Sunday is the Academy Awards which, while increasingly tedious and irrelevant, still has a major impact on the kinds of movies that we’re able to see in theaters. Let’s at least hope no one tells an actress to eat a cheeseburger this time around. 

If you’re tuning in to the broadcast, check out all our past coverage of Oscar-nominated films.

• Silver Linings Playbook: The film puts mental illness issues front and center, though it could use more nuance. Meanwhile, here’s our illustrated ode to Jennifer Lawrence’s character Tiffany.
• Flight: Denzel Washington has a solid role, but please don’t let this movie win any award, except one for “most sexism.” 
• Anna Karenina: This is a fresh take on a century-old narrative about gender roles, slut-shaming, and the importance of practicing train safety.  
• Zero Dark Thirty: Fingers crossed that Zero Dark Thirty wins the best picture award so that Bret Easton Ellis’s head will explode. 
• The Sessions: Our Tales from the Crip blogger dug into the film’s central issue of sex surrogacy.  
• Skyfall: The Academy seems to agree that the best thing about the new Bond movie is just the intro song. 
• Life of Pi: A boy and a cute tiger lead the audience through a colorful, entrancing limbo. But what’s up with people of color’s stories being told only through the lens of white authors? 
• Beasts of the Southern Wild: An illustrated tribute to Hushpuppy, the toughest kid in the bayou. 
• How to Survive a Plague: The documentary on AIDS activism combined old and new footage to make an inspiring flick.  

And big picture: Why don’t more female directors get nominated for Oscars? It comes down to money, money, money. 

Mad about sexism at the Oscars? Sign our letter telling the Academy five things they need to change right now.