Predicting this year’s Oscar nominations feels a bit like groping your way through a cave in the dark, as opposed to the usual brightly illuminated path lined with winners of precursor awards.
In a typical year, films and actors would have risen to the top of the field by now. But with the Golden Globes canceled-but-not-canceled and the Critics Choice Awards pushed back to March from January because of the Omicron variant, who knows what’s going on inside the heads of Oscar voters?
Between Jan. 27 and Feb. 1, 9,847 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could cast their votes on the 276 films eligible for the 94th annual Academy Awards. They tend to favor biopics, serious dramas and historical epics. But that doesn’t mean a blockbuster like “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which almost single-handedly resuscitated sagging box-office sales at the end of last year, or the James Bond film “No Time to Die” couldn’t sneak in.
So fire up your pancake griddle, put the coffee on and settle in for some drama. Unlike the ceremony in Hollywood in March, which has been known to exceed four hours, there’s little dawdling between the reading of the 120 entries in 23 categories — and no musical performances. The whole thing probably won’t last more than half an hour.
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