Pop Culture Fix: Delightfully Weird Period Lesbian Film Gets Ten Oscar Nods and Other Stories

+ Oscar nominations were unleashed upon the public yesterday and a full half of the films nominated were LGBTQ inclusive or otherwise address LGBTQ themes: Green Book, The Favourite, A Star Is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody. Several straight actresses were nominated for queer roles: Melissa McCarthy for Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman for The Favourite. Also notable is Black Panther‘s nomination for Best Picture, which also earned a nod for Hannah Beachler for Best Production Design, the first-ever Black person nominated in that category. Her previous work includes Moonlight and Beyonce’s Lemonade. Not one single woman was nominated for Best Director, not even the director of Can You Forgive Me?

Also, although LGBTQ stories had a huge showing this year, LGBTQ actors and writers did not. Lady Gaga is the only LGBTQ nominee.

+ Out also has a list of 11 people snubbed for Oscars, including lesbian actress Amandla Stenberg for The Hate U Give.

+ Lady Gaga Makes Oscars History as Bisexual Actress and Singer: Lady Gaga is the first women to earn dual nominations for Best Song and Best Actress in a Leading Role.

+ Here’s The Advocate on How a Film About a Lesbian Love Triangle Became Prime Oscars’ Bait.

+ Deadline talked to Ceci Dempsey and Ed Guiney about the long road to get The Favourite made, noting: “While Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite is nominated in 10 categories and up front in the Oscar race (matching Roma), there was a time, a long time actually, when it could not get financing. Partly due to its then-unfashionable period genre, but mostly because of its female-led story, its lack of major male roles and its lesbian love story, the film was serially sidelined.”

+ Another quote for you: “The Favourite might seem like it has the familiar trappings of a period drama, but it’s much weirder than you’d think. It’s basically lesbian Phantom Thread for 18th-century England, just as dedicated to opulent food spreads and deliciously twisted psychosexual power dynamics.”

+ This year’s Sundance Film Festival will feature a few queer-women-inclusive films, such as Adam, directed by Rhys Ernst, “the tale of awkward teen Adam who spends the last summer of high school with his older sister in New York City navigating the city’s LGBTQ activist scene,” Girls Weekend, starring Amy Landecker as “a lesbian who grapples with her homophobic sister, people-pleasing mother and gun-toting dad while on a visit home to Las Vegas” and Work In Progress, about a “45 year-old dyke who falls in love with a millennial transman.”

+ In other very important news, Kristen Stewart got a haircut so, yannow, We Are Obsessed With Kristen Stewart’s New Hair.

+ CW’s Batwoman Pilot Begins Filming in March

+ 13 Gay, Female TV Characters that are Great Role Models

+ Disowned by Star Sandra Bernhard, a Long Lost Queer Film Can Be Seen Again

+ HBO has acquired The Miseducation of Cameron Post

+ How to Make Sex Scenes Natural and Nonthreatening? Cue the ‘Intimacy Coordinator’

+ The Many Sides of Jane will feature a 28-year-old mother of two with Disassociate Identity Disorder who has nine personalities, one of which is, apparently, a lesbian. Tune in on A&E!

+ Satomaa Hopes to Normalize Queer Representation in Hip-Hop With ‘Zero Degrees’ Video: Watch

+ Gillian Anderson to play Margaret Thatcher in new The Crown

+ I couldn’t handle how gay, yet not gay, Grace and Frankie were becoming, but Heather has changed my mind about it: Grace Hanson Is a Confirmed Bisexual in Grace and Frankie’s Gayest Season Yet

+ I guess Coronation Street is letting us know ahead of time that they will be killing lesbian character Rana Habeeb this year. Thanks for the heads-up!

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Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3270 articles for us.

14 Comments

  1. The Favourite is bloody amazing. I’ve seen it four times and Olivia Colman deserves ALL the awards.

  2. Widows and Viola Davis were ROBBED!

    This is probably the wrong place to make this comment but I did not think The Hate U Give was a good movie.

  3. I have to add and this is probably not the best place because they are not queer movies, but….If Beale Street Could Talk, Sorry to Bother You, and Blindspotting were robbed!

    Yes, I am upset about the Oscar noms…

  4. Gillian Anderson playing Margaret Thatcher. This is wrong. I don’t want to be sexually attracted to Margaret Thatcher.

    Postscriptum: The day I see her I will finally fully understand Eddie Redmayne admitting on Graham Norton Show that he was into Nola from “The Lion King” as a teenager.

    • After I saw the link that was the first thing on my mind. That’s just 100% wrong!!!! You can’t do this to me, Gillian Anderson

  5. I haven’t watched The Favourite, but every time I see it referenced, I remember an article headline I saw that called it “a movie about female friendship.”

  6. Corrie is killing Rana???? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK did they miss the memo from like 4 years ago about how it’s not a cool move to unnecessarily kill off queer female characters, particularly queer WOC characters????

    FFS.

  7. I saw The Favourite on a date with a very hot butch and when we went for dinner afterward I told her that the lesson of the movie was “If you’re a conniving Slytherin don’t assume your sweet little cousin isn’t too; make an alliance with her or you’ll both lose.”

    • Was there a second date? Because the single version of this very mediocre butch would have been super into that comment.

  8. I can;’t wait to see The Favourite, but I am beyond said that Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams were completely ignored for “Disobedience.” People may not have loved the film, but their performances were magnificent.

Comments are closed.