The Brief

Tears welling in her eyes, Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan paused mid-sentence to calm herself on the Assembly floor.

Almost a century ago, the Nazis forced her grandmother to flee Austria, leaving behind her great-great-grandmother who died in the Holocaust, the Jewish Democrat from San Ramon told her fellow lawmakers. Last year, she said, her daughter told her that the bathrooms at her school had been vandalized with swastikas.

“My children deserve to show up at school and not have to face hate crimes in their building, to face the symbols that represented the end of their relatives,” she said.

Stories like hers, as well as Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, prompted California’s Jewish lawmakers to make countering antisemitism in schools their top priority this year. They sought to create a list of words and ideas that could not be mentioned in classrooms, including heavily disputed claims about Israel. The effort sparked the biggest, most emotional legislative fight of the year: Should the government regulate what can be taught in schools? If so, how far should it go?

At issue was Assembly Bill 715, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law this month after it went through multiple major, sometimes last-minute rewrites during months of political tussling.

Champions have argued the law will protect Jewish students from rising bullying and discrimination, sometimes from teachers. While the state does not collect data on antisemitism in schools, reports of anti-Jewish bias statewide have doubled between 2021 and 2024, according to the California Department of Justice. Last year, more than 15% of all hate crime events in California were anti-Jewish, even though Jewish people make up about 3% of the state population.

“We cannot hide from the profoundly unfortunate truth that Jewish kids are being isolated, made to feel unwelcome, and verbally and physically attacked. And far too often, our schools are failing to protect them,” Assemblymember Rick Zbur, a Los Angeles Democrat and co-author of the bill, said during a May hearing, when the bill started as merely a promise to curb antisemitism in schools.

Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur speaks to lawmakers during an Assembly floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Oct. 1, 2024.

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Fred Greaves

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By July, it had undergone a major overhaul, including determining that any instruction that “directly or indirectly deny Israel’s right to exist,” equating Israelis with Nazis, or disrespecting “the historical, cultural, or religious significance of Israel to the Jewish people” would count as creating an “antisemitic learning environment.” It reinvigorated debates over whether criticism of Israel’s founding, or even the belief that Jewish people should have an independent country in their ancient homeland, counts as antisemitic — something Jewish thinkers do not agree on.

Mainstream Jewish groups maintain that anti-Zionism, a broad term that generally opposes the idea of a standalone state with a Jewish-majority population, is antisemitic. Many Jewish academics, however, don’t think it is antisemitic on its own, but they agree that blaming individual Jews for the actions taken by the Israeli government is antisemitic.

That July version of the bill drew heavy opposition from a vast coalition of education groups, from teachers unions to school boards, civil rights advocates and Muslim community organizations, who feared censorship of pro-Palestinian voices and infringement upon academic freedom. They would remain opposed through its many iterations, and many of them urged Newsom to veto it.

Their concerns lingered even as the bill was ultimately watered down in the final days of this year’s legislative session to address bias more broadly: The final version no longer mentions the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bars using professional development materials that violate the state’s anti-discrimination laws. It also requires “factually accurate” instruction that is free of “advocacy, personal opinion, bias, or partisanship” — a controversial element the bill’s authors said they ran out of time to tackle and promised to “clean up” next year.

“In its current form, this bill only reinforces broader national trends of silencing constitutionally protected speech, erasing historically relevant curriculum, and persecuting anyone who expresses even the slightest opposition to the federal administration,” said Assemblymember Robert Garcia, a freshman Democratic lawmaker from Rancho Cucamonga and former teacher and school board member, who ultimately abstained from voting on the measure.

The squabble over the bill was messy, marked by hundreds of attendees, hourslong hearings, and accusations of bad faith from both sides. Bauer-Kahan called a teachers union advocate who opposed the bill antisemitic. After the bill passed out of the Legislature, a handful of pro-Palestinian activists protested from the Assembly gallery for more than an hour, yelling: “You will all have blood on your hands!”

Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan speaks in support of SCR 135, which would designate May 6, 2024 as California Holocaust Memorial Day on the Assembly floor at the state Capitol in Sacramento on April 29, 2024.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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The tension highlights the discomfort for California Democrats, who, despite having traditionally defended Israel, have had to reckon with a base growing increasingly critical of Israel. They faced a tough choice: Support the bill and risk upsetting some of the most powerful labor allies as well as their pro-Palestinian constituents, or oppose the bill and risk being labeled as antisemitic or unwilling to combat antisemitism. Amid the pressure, some Democratic lawmakers voted for the bill even as they warned it could be used to censor free speech. Others abstained instead of taking a side.

“I'm actually surprised that California state legislators would want to even touch it, because it's just so radioactive right now,” said Kim Nalder, a political science professor at Sacramento State University. “It just feels like at this political moment, we want to lower the temperature, not shine a spotlight on ways in which we might target each other.”

The issue was such a hot potato that many lawmakers avoided tackling it early in the legislative process, when policy differences are often ironed out, said Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a freshman progressive Democrat from Pasadena who chairs the Senate Education Committee. When the bill arrived in her committee in June, it still had no substantive language. Some lawmakers told her to not touch it either, while others left it up to her to “take care of it,” she said.

“The ball got thrown to me,” she told CalMatters. "And people knew that they were doing that."

'People would end up being very angry on both sides'

California’s Jewish lawmakers introduced the bill in response to intensifying clashes in schools and college campuses nationwide over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. For some Democrats, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

The Gaza war has forced a tidal shift within the Democratic base, as voters’ support for Israel’s military campaign tanked over the past two years. That has forced some Democrats, even moderates who have historically backed Israel, to condemn the country and pull away from pro-Israel donors. Young Democrats are also more critical of Israel than their older peers, so any vote that could be perceived as silencing pro-Palestinian voices is risky.

“A very strong part of Democratic and leftist values that we are seeing expressed now is anti-genocide or anti-war,” Nalder said. “(For) my students who are politically active, this is one of the chief issues that they care about.”

The bill also came as President Donald Trump ordered immigration agents to arrest student activists critical of the Israeli government and withheld billions of dollars in funding from universities for their alleged failure to protect Jewish students. At least half a dozen other state Legislatures sought to fight antisemitism in schools this year, with some adopting a highly disputed definition of antisemitism in state education codes. Enraged, some opponents accused California Democrats of taking a page out of Trump’s playbook.

But the Democratic lawmakers had to balance all that with the risk of upsetting the Jewish community, a key voting block. A no vote could be construed as antisemitic, making the lawmaker vulnerable to challenges in the next election, Nalder said.

The bill was the sole priority of the 18-member California Legislative Jewish Caucus, which is composed entirely of Democrats and led by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel of Encino and Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, who chair the budget committees in their respective chambers.

Neither would speak with CalMatters about what happened with the bill. Gabriel’s office did not respond to several CalMatters emails seeking an interview, whereas Wiener declined to comment, pointing CalMatters to the bill authors instead.

David Bocarsly, executive director of the Jewish Public Affairs Committee, which sponsored the bill, said the caucus’ backing was crucial.

“The Jewish caucus was able to leverage their influence and respect with their colleagues and effectively represent the Jewish community’s needs,” he said.

Pérez acknowledged the political challenge, telling CalMatters she would have preferred to hold the bill until next year, but said legislative leaders had promised to deliver a bill the governor could sign this year. She said some colleagues told her it was “an impossible situation” to navigate.

“They felt like there was no winning,” she said. “Regardless of what they would try to do to make amendments to it … people would end up being very angry on both sides.”

A debate over academic freedom

The clash over AB 715 is the latest episode of yearslong strife over how to teach about marginalized communities in California’s K-12 schools and who should be included.

In past years, the fight primarily focused on ethnic studies — a mandatory high school course on the history and culture of groups such as Latinos, Asian Americans, African Americans and Native Americans. The state adopted a model curriculum in 2021, after years of fine-tuning amid disputes over which ethnic minority groups to teach about and criticism from Jewish advocates, who accused past versions of being antisemitic.

Jewish lawmakers championed a bill earlier this year that aimed to tackle antisemitism by restricting the ethnic studies curriculum, but the effort was stopped early in its tracks, and legislators turned to AB 715 instead.

“This is a bill about protecting Jewish students, and it shouldn't have been controversial,” said Bocarsly, of JPAC. “If we don't teach empathy and understand it, we're going to build a generation of intolerance, and that's what we're trying to correct for.”

He said AB 715 was “the hardest political fight in JPAC’s history” and that the initial definition of an antisemitic learning environment was only meant to offer teachers guidance.

But opponents had two major concerns: that the bill’s initial definition of antisemitic learning environment risked silencing discord about Israel, and that even in its final watered-down version it could chill free speech and open teachers up to lawsuits for teaching about anything controversial.

“Jews are most safe when democracy flourishes, when pluralism flourishes, not when rights are taken away,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association and a Jewish father to three children who attend public schools.

A classroom at a high school in Imperial County on Dec. 12, 2023.

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Kristian Carreon

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What’s safe for Jews was itself a matter of disagreement among the bill’s backers and dissenters. Bocarsly said CTA leadership’s opposition to every version of the bill shows that they “have little interest in supporting a bill that would protect Jewish students.”

Goldberg, in an interview, called that accusation “a lot of chutzpah, frankly.”

The fact the bill even tried to prescribe what an antisemitic environment looked like in classrooms was concerning to Kenneth Stern, a scholar on hate. More than 20 years ago, he was the lead author of the highly controversial definition of antisemitism that’s been adopted by some states this year. It all but labels anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism. Now, nearly 50 countries, including the U.S., have embraced the definition.

Though Stern wrote the definition, he opposes using it to restrict speech in schools, arguing that it could threaten academic freedom and fuel censorship by chilling discussion about controversial topics. Stern said despite all the revisions made during the process, the final version will likely make antisemitism worse.

The law creates an antisemitism prevention coordinator to advise education and legislative leaders and says the person in that role should use federal guidelines published under former President Joe Biden as “a basis” for decision-making. The controversial definition of antisemitism Stern wrote is labeled as the most prominent definition of antisemitism in those guidelines, though it mentions others.

“I understand why people care about (preventing antisemitism in schools),” he said. “They want the Legislature to do something. I think the legislators are sincere that they want to do something. This is the wrong thing.”

Educators like Goldberg worry the bill could allow bad-faith critics to also dispute a wide array of controversial topics taught in schools. Will it become the basis for critics of the transgender community to pressure teachers to say there are only two genders, he wondered.

Gabriel Kahn, a Jewish teacher in Oakland who said he’s being investigated by his school district after challenging the content of an antisemitic training last year, said he fears prosecution for voicing the need to distinguish between antisemitism and criticism of Israel.

“What I’m most afraid of is that in the Democratic state of California, we can pass a censorship bill that protects a foreign nation from criticism implicitly,” he said. “What does that say about the future of academic freedom in our country?”

CalMatters reporter Carolyn Jones contributed reporting.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

For 24 years, I've been bringing together audiences here in Southern California ahead of the Oscars so we can review our favorites together.

Last week, we had a packed house at the Alex Theater in Glendale for our annual Film Week Academy Awards Preview.

We gathered nine of our regular FilmWeek critics, whose voices listeners hear on LAist 89.3 on our weekly review of movies. Hundreds of LAist listeners and readers who attended also got to vote for their personal favorites.

If we missed you March 7, we have clips of all 10 of the best picture nominees and the favorite for best animated feature. I have to say, I really loved sharing the experience of the movies with so many people. We'd love to see you in person at next year's event.

Meet the FilmWeek critics

• Tim Cogshell: FilmWeek critic, Alt-Film Guide and CineGods.com
• Christy Lemire: FilmWeek critic, RogerEbert.com and co-host of the Breakfast All Day podcast
• Lael Loewenstein: FilmWeek critic
• Wade Major: FilmWeek critic and CineGods.com 
• Amy Nicholson: FilmWeek critic, film critic for the Los Angeles Times and host of the podcast ‘Unspooled’
• Claudia Puig: FilmWeek critic and program director for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival
• Peter Rainer: FilmWeek critic and the Christian Science Monitor 
• Charles Solomon: FilmWeek critic, Animation Scoop and Animation Magazine 

Watch our full Oscar preview story

Best Picture

Nominees

Bugonia
F1
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Train Dreams

• Critics consensus: Sinners
• Audience: Sinners

Best Director

Nominees

Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Ryan Coogler, Sinners

• Critics' consensus: Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another

Some other critics said that while they wanted Coogler to win, they thought the Oscar would go to Anderson.

Best Actress

Nominees

Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Emma Stone, Bugonia

• Critics' consensus: Jessie Buckley for Hamnet
• Audience choice: Emma Stone for Bugonia

Lemire said that while she'd love to see the win go to Rose Byrne, she called Buckley the "only lock of the night"

Best Actor

Nominees:

Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

• Critics' consensus: Michael B. Jordan for Sinners
• Audience choice: Michael B. Jordan for Sinners

Best Supporting Actress

Nominees:

Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
Amy Madigan, Weapons
Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

• Critics' consensus: Amy Madigan for Weapons
• Audience choice: Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Best Supporting Actor

Nominees

Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
Delroy Lindo, Sinners
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

• Critics' consensus: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
• Audience choice: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another

Best Original Screenplay

Nominees

Blue Moon, written by Robert Kaplow
It Was Just an Accident, written by Jafar Panahi; script collaborators: Nader Saïvar, Shadmehr Rastin, Mehdi Mahmoudian
Marty Supreme, written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie
Sentimental Value, written by Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
Sinners, written by Ryan Coogler

• Critics' consensus: Sinners, written by Ryan Coogler
• Audience choice: Sinners, written by Ryan Coogler

Best Adapted Screenplay

Nominees

Bugonia, screenplay by Will Tracy
Frankenstein, written for the screen by Guillermo del Toro
Hamnet, screenplay by Chloé Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell
One Battle after Another, written by Paul Thomas Anderson
Train Dreams, screenplay by Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar

• Critics' consensus: None
• Audience choice: Train Dreams, screenplay by Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar

Best Animated Feature

Nominees

Arco
Elio
KPop Demon Hunters
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Zootopia 2

• Critics' consensus: Tie, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain and KPop Demon Hunters
• Audience choice: KPop Demon Hunters

Best Documentary

Nominees:

The Alabama Solution
Come See Me in the Good Light
Cutting Through Rocks
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
The Perfect Neighbor

• Critics' consensus: The Perfect Neighbor
• Audience choice: no vote

While the only officially gendered awards for the Oscars are for acting, it’s no secret the Academy historically has favored men when it comes to handing out statuettes. Between 1929 and 2026, women made up less than 18% of all nominees, according to a report by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

If you exclude the acting nominees, women have been nominated for just under 13% of all awards in the nearly century since the awards began, said Stacy L. Smith, who founded the initiative in 2005 to track inequality in entertainment.

Smith said the numbers, while stark, aren’t surprising.

“This industry cannot change itself,” Smith said. “To create change, you really need to work with folks and bring them in.”

To better understand where gender disparity stands today, we analyzed who actually speaks in the 10 films up for what many consider to be the highest honor in film: best picture at this Sunday’s Academy Awards.

Why? Because gender disparity in dialogue tells us something about the kinds of films that get nominated for awards — or made in the first place — and whose stories tend to be institutionally valued.

We went into this analysis knowing that historically, films that contend for best picture have been dominated by stories driven by male characters. We analyzed the 10 nominated films of 2026 and also analyzed the 2025 nominees to determine the most recent patterns.

Our findings: Women characters spoke about a quarter of the words. That’s down from a third of words in last year’s nominated films.

“Whether we look at just who's on screen, and now when we look at how much they speak, your findings reiterate this real lack of inclusion for women and girls on screen,” Smith said.

The details:

Men overwhelmingly dominate dialogue in eight films. In each — save for Bugonia — at least 70% of the words go to men. Bugonia has the narrowest difference at 56% men and 44% women, snagging the third-highest percentage of female dialogue.

Two films stand out for having twice as much dialogue by women than the overall average of 25%. In Sentimental Value, women speak 57% of the words, and in Hamnet, they speak 51%.

One Battle After Another is the only film where an explicitly nonbinary character speaks. However, their number of words spoken — 25 — is so small compared to the rest of the dialogue that it comes out to 0.2% of the film.

Hamnet is the only best picture nominee to be directed by a woman: Chloé Zhao.

How this compares to last year

Last year, women spoke the majority of words in three films: Emilia Perez, Wicked and I’m Still Here. In all three, women spoke at least 60% of the words.

In 2025, like this year, one film directed by a woman, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, was nominated for best picture.

Why lead characters matter 

This year, Sentimental Value, Hamnet and Bugonia have the biggest share of dialogue by women among the best picture nominees. They’re also the only films with a lead woman character.

Michelle (Emma Stone), the main character of Bugonia, speaks the most out of the three women in lead roles. Of the leads in nominated films, she ranks fourth overall behind Marty (Timothée Chalamet) in Marty Supreme, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) in Frankenstein and her own co-lead, Teddy (Jesse Plemons).

Agnes (Jessie Buckley) from Hamnet ranks fifth. Nora (Renate Reinsve) from Sentimental Value ranks eighth behind the male leads from One Battle After Another and Train Dreams.

We should note that what constitutes a “lead” role can be subjective. For the purposes of this analysis, we based it on plot summaries and the prominence of the character in the arc of the film.

In most films, lead characters talk more than people in supporting roles. Sentimental Value and Train Dreams are the exceptions. Stellan Skarsgård is nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Gustav Borg in Sentimental Value. Borg speaks about 2,000 words, while his daughter, Nora, speaks about 1,300 in what’s considered a lead role. And in Train Dreams, a man narrates (Will Patton) and speaks about 1,500 words, while Robert Grainier (Joe Edgerton) speaks about 1,400.

Half of last year’s best picture nominees had a woman as the lead character. Female leads outnumbered male leads seven to six, and they generally spoke a greater share of dialogue than them too — save for Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) from Conclave and Bob Dylan (Chalamet) from A Complete Unknown.

Unlike this year, not all films with a woman in a lead role had majority women’s dialogue overall. In Anora and The Substance, women still spoke less than men.

However, lead characters did speak more words than any other character individually — except for in Wicked, where Glinda (Ariana Grande) speaks about 200 more words than Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo).

To try to measure how interested characters are in themselves compared to others and compare that across genders, the analysis looked at how often characters speak “I” words such as “I,” “me” or “my” (among others) versus “you” words like “you,” “your” or “yours” (among others).

We found that women speak more about themselves in half of the best picture nominees. That includes Sentimental Value, Bugonia, Frankenstein, Marty Supreme and The Secret Agent. Admittedly, this is a limited evaluation. It doesn't include first-person plural words like “we,” it doesn’t include third-person pronouns like “he,” “she” or “they,” and it doesn't include the names of characters if they're used to address others. The bottom line: It shouldn't be taken as definitive, especially not without context from the movie.

What women talk about on screen has been the subject of interest for some time. In 1985, Alison Bechdel, a graphic artist, started talking about her criteria for watching a film. Now commonly called the Bechdel test, she said a film had to 1) feature two women characters who 2) talk to each other about 3) something other than a man. This analysis did not measure whether the best picture nominees passed the Bechdel Test, but it’s nonetheless an alternative way to measure women’s representation.

Looking at this data comprehensively — while taking into account the percent of words spoken by women, which films have a woman lead, the content of women’s dialogue and its relationship to their share of words — one film emerges as a standout.

And the Oscar for Most Woman-Driven Story goes to …

An image from the film "Sentimental Value."

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MK2 Films

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Directed by Joachim Trier, the Norwegian film Sentimental Value follows sisters Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) as they reunite with their estranged father, filmmaker Gustav Borg (Skarsgård). Elle Fanning also stars in a supporting role as actor Rachel Kemp. Aside from best picture, the film received eight other nominations.

Sentimental Value has the highest percentage of words spoken by women. It’s one of just three films with a woman lead. And women refer to themselves more than they refer to the characters they speak to.

It’s the only film where women speak the majority of words and where their word choice favors themselves.

How we got here

Sexism in Hollywood has been the subject of scholarly research, books and, yes, movies. Women are underrepresented in what’s known as “below-the-line” roles, as well as in top executive positions. While the #MeToo movement that called out powerful men in Hollywood led to some actions, change has been slow.

Carolyn Finger, a former media analyst at Variety and Luminate, said conversations around representation — like the #OscarsSoWhite social media campaign in 2015 — help to bolster change in the industry. But there’s still much work to be done.

“What I’ve observed is that when those conversations happen, there is incremental change, but it’s not often sustained change,” Finger said.

This dialogue analysis, she added, “look[s] at who literally has a voice.”

To be clear, the quantity of words spoken is just one measure. On screen, sometimes silence, an action or a particular facial expression carries a greater message than words could convey. And a male-driven story may still have strong, nuanced and well-written women characters.

What's next

Smith said that to create change, studios need to adopt more equitable hiring practices and ensure the films they produce reflect the people watching them.

“If you’re a shareholder, if you go to the movies and buy tickets. If you support these companies by watching their shows, communicate back at what you’re not seeing and why that’s a problem,” Smith said.

Still, this year could be a potentially historic Oscars ceremony. The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative reported that a record-tying 33% of this year’s Oscar nominees are women. Hamnet director Chloé Zhao is the second woman, and first woman of color, to be nominated for best director twice. And if she wins, she’ll be the first woman to win best director more than once.

The 98th Academy Awards will take place 4 p.m. Sunday.

Wanna watch the Oscars this weekend with other movie lovers, but don’t want to host a watch party yourself? Many Los Angeles bars and restaurants have you covered.

While the fifth annual “Official” Oscars Watch Party held at The Academy Museum is sold out, there are still plenty of places showing the Academy Awards live. Here are a few to check out below:

(And when it comes to your Oscar ballot, LAist has you covered with expert predictions — and heated debates — from FilmWeek’s 24th annual Oscars Preview.)

Brazilian Oscars Watch Party

Sunday, March 15, 3 p.m.
Dusty Vinyl
11326 W Pico Blvd., West L.A.
COST: $50; MORE INFO

LAist events columnist Laura Hertzfeld suggests checking out this unique watch party: “Why not celebrate with the Brazilians and their nomination for (the excellent film) The Secret Agent? Dusty Vinyl is being turned into a 1977 secret-agent-themed hideout for the occasion, with a bespoke menu (food is included) and live music before the show starts; '70s costumes encouraged.”

The Hollywood Roosevelt’s Academy Awards Viewing Gala

Sunday, March 15, 3-10 p.m.
The Hollywood Roosevelt 
7000 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood
COST: $375; MORE INFO

If you’re looking to splurge on a four-course dinner and get as close to the actual Academy Awards (held at the Dolby Theatre) as possible, the gala at The Hollywood Roosevelt is your spot. There’s also the added fun of watching the show in the ballroom where the very first Academy Awards were held in 1929.

Beers, Burgers and Best Picture

Sunday, March 15, 3:30 p.m.
33 Taps, all locations
Culver City, Silver Lake, DTLA, WeHo
COST: Free; MORE INFO

All 33 Taps sports bars will be showing the Oscars live on Sunday.

Oscars Watch Party at The Greyhound

Sunday, March 15, 4 p.m.
The Greyhound Bar & Grill
5570 N Figueroa St., Highland Park
COST: Free; MORE INFO

The Highland Park bar and grill will have an Oscar ballot contest with a $5 buy-in for a chance to win a cash prize.

Rooftop Red Carpet Dinner + Watch Party

Sunday, March 15, 2:30 p.m.
Elevate Lounge
811 Wilshire Blvd., DTLA
COST: $39; MORE INFO

If a “celebrity-style atmosphere” with a red carpet, rooftop views and 360 degree photobooth is what you’re looking for, Elevate Lounge has got you. Your VIP ticket includes complimentary hors d’oeuvres for the first two hours of the event from Takami Sushi & Robata.

Oscars Trivia + Screening Party

Sunday, March 15, 2 to 10 p.m.
2636 Huron St., Cypress Park
COST: Free; MORE INFO

This trivia night, Oscar ballot contest and watch party is free, but formal attire is required. Trivia begins at 3 p.m., before the show starts.

Dinner in WeHo + the Oscars

Sunday, March 15, 4 p.m.
La Boheme
8400 Santa Monica Blvd, WeHo
COST: Free admission; MORE INFO

The West Hollywood Mediterranean restaurant will be showing the Oscars on their projector screen and offering Happy Hour specials all night (which they also offer every Monday-Thursday and Sunday).

It’s hard to look at a restaurant menu without being able to order anything from it, but Tien Nguyen has made it her mission to do exactly that.

Nguyen, a food writer and Los Angeles Public Library creator in residence, has been digging through the library’s archives of restaurant menus, some of which go back to the early 1900’s. She’s specifically focused on the neighborhood we now know as Koreatown, and says tracing the evolution of dishes offered can help us understand its history.

“ L.A.'s Koreatown is a really great example of the ways we can look at menus and see how the neighborhood has changed over time,” she said.

She’s been sharing her research with the public, and will be giving a talk this Saturday at L.A. Central Library’s Taper Auditorium.

How restaurants reflect K-Town’s history

In the early 20th century, Koreatown was mostly known as Wilshire Center. Its Art Deco apartments were freshly built, and landmarks like the Ambassador Hotel were trendy spots for celebrities and dignitaries.

“There's one menu that I remember that is in honor of Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa, and you could see there was a big feast and banquet for them,” Nguyen said. “There were also menus for the king and queen of Greece.”

But soon after, other L.A. neighborhoods became in vogue and Koreatown hit a period of decline, even as high-rise buildings started to go up in the mid-20th century.

Following that, Koreatown started to take shape as into the diverse ethnic enclave it is today. Nguyen ties the changes to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed the United States’ highly restrictive quotas on immigration from certain countries, especially those in Asia.

About the menus

Nguyen told LAist the menu of the Korean restaurant The Prince is one of the best examples of this evolution. The restaurant now offers comfort food favorites like bibim mandu and its signature dakgangjeong. But in the middle of last century, it was known as The Windsor, and offered European continental fare.

The Windsor's food offerings from 1958.

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“ It looks like they have great cocktails, they have really great fresh fruit alongside steaks and all sorts of different types of pastas,” Nguyen said. “When I look at those menus, you do have a bit of FOMO, but at the same time, I also am a person of color. So there's also this recognition that maybe I wouldn't have been welcome in some of those spaces as well.”

In the 1990s, the space came under new ownership and became The Prince – a Korean restaurant that still preserves its Old Hollywood charm.

“The thing to get there really is the Korean fried chicken, the tteokbokki – the rice cakes – and the Korean pancakes,” Nguyen said.

Another example which shows the emerging Korean influence of the area comes from the restaurant Beverly Soon Tofu, which opened in 1986. The restaurant’s menu was painted onto gourds, one of which is currently on display at Koreatown’s Pio Pico Branch Library until the end of the month.

Nguyen, who co-authored a cookbook with Beverly Soon Tofu’s founder Monica Lee (not to mention two books written with Kogi’s Roy Choi), said the menu was inspired by Korean countryside decor.

Monica Lee of Beverly Soon Tofu, pictured soon after her restaurant's opening in 1986, along with a letter announcing the opening.

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“ These dried gourds were also used as lanterns, so that was her inspiration for wanting to make it look like a menu, because her restaurant at the time was decorated kind of like a countryside restaurant,” she said.

As Korean-Americans settled in what Monica Lee called a sometimes “hot, busy and bothersome” city when she founded her restaurant in 1986, they shaped the neighborhood into the largest Koreatown in the United States – and also shaped the way Americans far and wide eat.

An translation of Beverly Soon Tofu's opening announcement.

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“ You go to Trader Joe's, and there's that kimbap that was really popular for so many years,” Nguyen said.

Korean-Americans did this alongside many other immigrant populations that call Koreatown home – many of its strip malls represent cuisines from several different countries.

“What's kind of amazing about that to me is that it is something that feels natural,” Nguyen said. “ Koreatown has a large Oaxacan population, for example. It has a very big Bangladeshi population. And so all these foods, all these cultures, [mingled] together to create a food culture that I think is so distinctly Los Angeles.”

Nguyen also credited Korean restaurants with sourcing fresh ingredients locally – even though they aren’t as celebrated as other Californian restaurants for doing so.

How to attend the talk

Nguyen will give her talk “Menus as Neighborhood Maps: How Los Angeles Restaurant Menus Tell Stories of Community Formation” at 10:30am Saturday, March 14, at the L.A. Central Library’s Taper Auditorium.

You can RSVP here.