It's Friday, February 28th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is Whataday, the show that definitely didn't bring a bunch of MAGA influencers to the White House to celebrate releasing decade-old documents on a sex trafficker, which then got a whole bunch of MAGA people mad at the MAGA influencers.

On today's show, pro-misogyny influencers, the Tate brothers head to Florida after Romania lifts their travel ban.

And UK Prime Minister Keir Starmor tries to convince President Donald Trump

not to abandon Ukraine. But let's start with a subject that is near and dear to my heart.

Movies. The Oscars of this Sunday, a time for the film industry to celebrate the best it has to offer.

And from Wicked to Nickel Boys to Wad Favorite Conclave, there have been a lot of great movies to honor this year.

Now, this is not exactly our usual politics coverage, but movies are political, and Oscar season this year has been messy in a way that kind of matches our weird political moment.

From Amelia Perez going from surefire best picture winner to cinematic albatross

because of some tweets, among other reasons, to the use of AI and the Brutalist, there's been

something for everyone to get mad at. Even the very concept of the Oscars race is weird. It's basically

members of an industry lobbying other members of that same industry to give a movie a big award. Even if most Americans haven't seen, or in the case of the brutalist, couldn't see

the movie itself because of limited screenings. And let's not kid ourselves. The Academy of

Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Academy Awards, the Oscars to you and me,

isn't always the best adjudicator for what movies

are good. Some anonymous Oscars voters told Entertainment Weekly they didn't even finish some of

the movies they're supposed to be voting on. And past Best Picture winners have really ranged

in quality. Sure, I guess you could argue that the English patient was better than Fargo.

It won Best Picture in

1996, but when was the last time you thought about the shape of water, which won the top prize

in 2017? So if Oscar season is full of unnecessary drama, the Academy rarely gets it right,

and the movies that most Americans see don't get attention from the industry's biggest awards show, what's the point? Should we even have the Academy Awards anymore?

To find out, I talked to Sam Sanders, host of KCRW's The Sam Sanders Show, and Vibe Check.

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