I’ve heard rumors about one Best Actor contender and one Supporting Actress hopeful being secret vaccine skeptics. Even awards-season skullduggery has to adapt to this strange new world. (You saw this at TIFF, where tony premieres at Roy Thomson Hall drew the crowd of a Sunday-afternoon showing of The Aeronauts.) The Academy gets more global every year, but international travel restrictions could throw a wrench in the ability of non-U.S. The trades will no longer be able to report on around-the-block lines before screenings, as capacity restrictions mean even the most coveted showings will be capped out around 50 percent. Still, none of us are the same as we were two years ago, and that includes Oscar. If you squinted, you could almost pretend it was 2019 all over again. Consensus seems to be that the festival pulled it off, landing in that strange 2021 sweet spot: safe enough to not freak people out, relaxed enough to still feel vaguely normal. Much of the schmoozing took place at outdoor venues, while the indoor ones required a negative test in the last 48 hours. Everyone had to be vaxxed just to show up. September’s Telluride Film Festival was an unofficial dry run. The first is that, after an awards season that took place almost entirely virtually - give or take a rendition of “Da Butt” - the industry is ready to fête and be fêted in person again. What will the Oscars race look like this year? There are two answers to that question.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture A24, Focus Features, Netflix, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Clockwise from top: The Tragedy of, Dune, Belfast, House of Gucci, and The Power of the Dog.