This weekend’s Oscars come to us soggy and shorn of spectacle. Covid meant that the nominees couldn’t all have their photo taken together, plus the lack of a televised Golden Globes has sapped awards season of all momentum. But at least one time-honoured scrap of Oscars tradition has remained undimmed: the anonymous ballot.
A mainstay of contemporary awards hype, this is where a voting member of the academy will dash off to one website or another under the cloak of anonymity in the run-up to the Oscars so that they can be extraordinarily bitchy about all the films they didn’t like. And while this is often good fun, they do also provide the tiniest insight into which way the winds might blow on Sunday night. Here’s what we’ve been able to glean from all of this year’s assorted moles.
