The end is in sight: after months of campaigning, roundtables, red carpets and hot takes, it’s time for the big show. The Academy Awards are Hollywood’s end of season party, its senior prom and sports day all rolled into one, as the film world’s great and good stuff themselves into their tuxedos and/or fanciest frocks for a night of (we hope) entertaining mutual backslapping.
It’s fair to say that, so far, this awards season has been somewhat eventful, from the N-word fiasco at the UK’s normally sedate Baftas to the Timothée Chalamet Balletgate. Now the dust has settled, it looks like a straight fight between Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Thomas Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another for most of the big prizes. Anderson’s chunky auteur project looked for a while as though it might have the edge, but since nomination day, when Sinners got more nods than any other previous film, momentum has appeared to move decisively in its direction. We shall see.
