Oscar predictions: Who will probably win, and who I would have voted for

The 93rd annual Academy Awards will be handed out Sunday, April 25, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Union Station in Los Angeles, and possibly some other remote sites — capping off one of the strangest years in moviegoing, because where wasn’t a lot of “going.”

Instead, there was a lot of staying in during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the movie studios accommodated by shifting their films to streaming platforms — Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, and so on. The big blockbusters, though, sat on the shelf, waiting for a time when we could go back safely into movie theaters, spend money at the box office and eat copious amounts of popcorn, the way we used to do.

There were a lot of quality films for Academy voters to process, and both they and regular moviegoers had more chances to do so from the comfort of their own homes. So picking favorites for this year’s Oscars should be easy, right? We’ll find out — and I’ll see if my predictions, published in The Salt Lake Tribune, hold up.