Is it just me, or has this Oscar season lasted five years? Maybe it's because the Barbenheimer phenomenon has been with us since the summer. Or maybe we've just heard one too many times that Bradley Cooper spent half a decade learning how to conduct for "Maestro." Whether you are a casual observer or an Oscar completist who is now cramming in a few more animated shorts, it all ends Sunday, with the ninety-sixth Academy Awards. Much is already known, or widely assumed: we're likely to hear the word "Oppenheimer" several times, Da'Vine Joy Randolph ("The Holdovers") is a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actress, and Jimmy Kimmel will be back to poke fun at Hollywood and move things along.

This week, the panel is joined by Slate writer and senior editor Sam Adams to dissect Poor Things, director Yorgos Lanthimos horny, steampunk Frankenstein tale about Bella Baxter (played by Emma Stone), a pregnant woman who commits suicide then is brought back to life by a brilliant scientist (Willem Dafoe), with an eccentric caveat: She now has the brain of her unborn fetus. Then, the three remember Norman Lear, the late television pioneer and American icon who died at the age of 101 and who was responsible for ushering in a new era of character-driven, comedic, topical, and morally serious TV with hit sitcoms like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, and One Day at a Time. Finally, they are joined by Slate's books and culture columnist, Laura Miller, who shares her top ten books of the year, and along with Dana, discusses the joys and challenges of year-end listmaking. In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel reunites with Sam Adams to spoil Poor Things, detailing what is arguably the film's weakest portion: the final ten minutes. The deadline to submit is Wednesday, December 13.

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has made a handful of very different movies over the past decade and a half, but his pet themes have a way of recurring in every one. To take a just a few examples: His breakthrough movie, 2009's Dogtooth, was a hermetic fable about a tyrannical couple who keep their three grown children trapped in a locked compound, feeding them lies about the world beyond their gates. The Lobster, from 2015, took place in an allegorical alternate reality where single adults who fail to find a romantic partner are legally compelled to be transformed into animals. The Favourite, Lanthimos' biggest international hit and the movie that won Olivia Colman a Best Actress Oscar in 2019, was a hyperstylized historical drama that played 18th-century court intrigue for the blackest of comedy. Poor Things, Lanthimos' adaptation of a 1992 novel by the Scottish writer Alasdair Gray (the screenplay is by Tony McNamara, who also co-wrote The Favourite), can be seen as the culminating expression of the filmmaker's longtime obsessions: the horror of being trapped in a closed system, the individual's often self-destructive quest to break free from said bondage, the warping effects of intergenerational trauma, and the capacity of the human body for transformation. Poor Things is a feminist recasting of the Frankenstein myth, a gorgeously designed setting for the jewel that is Emma Stone's lead performance, and not just my favorite Lanthimos movie I've seen yet but maybe the only one of his I've really liked.

Who could turn down an invitation to an event that promised "a candid look at advertising in 2018" and undertook "to unpack the most talked about challenges and opportunities" in the field today"? It is, of course, a sign of my age that I was surprised that the invitation came from a Kantar Millward Brown. To have a research supplier reporting back on the Cannes Lions 2018, once the stronghold of creative agencies, is probably surprising only to someone who still has memories of struggling to stay awake while being subjected to hours of earnest monotone presentations of reams of statistics by market researchers. Of course, things have evolved, and Kantar Millward Brown now describes itself as "the world's leading experts in helping clients grow great brands". The website assures us that "we are constantly analysing, understanding and interpreting the world around us.