Current Oscar nominee for Best Picture from last year. Jeffrey Wright (up for Best Actor) stars as a down on his luck author/teacher whose work is well respected but comes up snake eyes in terms of sales. This hits home when he attends the reading of a fellow author's, Issa Rae, new novel which is replete w/racist stereotypes & modes of speech which still manages to gain financial traction & acclaim from the white world at large coupled w/his mother's, Leslie Uggams (Blind Al from the Deadpool series), debilitating mental faculties, he finds himself at odds w/his creative self & financial bottom line prompting him to write a similar book to Rae's as a fluke & hands it in to his editor, John Ortiz, using a pseudonym who comes back w/the bewildering news the book has sold & the word on the literary street is that it will be a hit. Perplexed at his turn of fate, Wright has to reconcile on how to move forward w/his ruse (especially after he's been pegged to judge the book & others for a prestigious yearly prize) while also navigating a new woman in his life, Living Single's Erika Alexander, & his ne'er do well brother, Sterling K. Brown (up for supporting actor) & did I mention the sleazy Hollywood director, Adam Brody, who's interested in turning his tome into a film? Adapted & directed by Cord Jefferson (who's up for adapted screenplay) based on Erasure by Percival Everett is a wonderfully nuanced satire which hits where it hurts in this racially biased society that favors all things real until it moves next door to them on their block. Gleaning wonderful perfs from all involved including Tracee Ellis Ross (who plays Wright's sister), Keith David & Miriam Shor, the film plays like a wonderful balm to those supposed treatises on race like last year's The Blackening getting the notes played at such pitch perfect exactitude, you almost lament the also-rans which'll come in its wake.