Oscar Nominations Analysis: Voters Give Power to ‘The Dog’ in a Year Marked by Change

thewrap.com:

really complicated them further, and suddenly we were back to an awards season conducted almost exclusively online, with few opportunities for voters to trade favorites and little chance for buzz to grow.

It was a year in which most Academy voters no doubt cast ballots for films they’d seen on computer screens or TV monitors, which is another reason why the strength of “The Power of the Dog” came as a slight surprise; that film’s combination of wide vistas and shadowed intimacy demands to be seen on a big screen, something many voters likely couldn’t do.And now we have a long Phase 2: Final voting doesn’t even begin for more than a month, and the Oscars aren’t taking place until March 27, almost seven weeks from now.In one way, the Academy looks smart for having scheduled its show a month later than usual – because unless other variants emerge to throw things into disarray, that seems to be a relatively good time to have some kind of in-person ceremony. (Almost all of January’s and most of February’s awards shows were either postponed or went virtual.)But it’s also a very long time to wait, particularly since the Academy (and, really, the industry) is desperate to have awards shows regain some of the viewers they’ve lost over the last few years.

And without “Spider-Man” in the Best Picture competition, they’ll have to find other ways to stir up interest – because this particular batch of movies, as fine as many of them are, don’t have the profile to turn the trick.

Now, it’s not the job of voters to come up with a slate of films that will increase the Oscar show’s viewership; it’s their job to salute what they think is the best of the year in film.