I’m not an Oscars prediction guy — I’m an Oscars advocacy guy. That’s been my handle all along.

Example: I was an ardent Green Book admirer and supporter during the 2018 and ‘19 Oscar year, as I knew in my heart that Peter Farrelly’s film was a harmless, heart-warming period film (‘62) about a parent-child relationship that evolves and deepens over the course of a road trip through the racist South. Helping to defeat the anti-Green Book wokester cabal was a glorious HE satisfaction.

The principal HE advocacy issues this year:

(a) Penelope Cruz for Best Actress — HE has been way ahead of the pack on the value of Cruz’s Parallel Mothers performance for many months;

(b) King Richard is far more nutritious and moving and well-crafted than CODA or The Power of the Dog, and should win the Best Picture Oscar;

(c) Volodymyr Zelensky, an actor-comedian before becoming Ukraine’s president, gets to make a passionate plea & proudly affirm Ukraine’s pride and independence during the show if he wants to do this. I presumed yesterday that Zelensky does want a moment of Oscar’s time, or Sean Penn, presumably attuned to Zelensky’s thinking, wouldn’t have spoken so passionately about the matter on CNN;

(d) Spider-Man: Far From Home should have been Best Picture nominated in tribute to how excitingly & even profoundly it emotionally connected with hoi polloi ticket buyers, not to mention the fact that its success all but saved exhibition during a pandemic-and-streaming-besieged year; and…

(e) Stanley Nelson Jr. and Traci Curry’s Attica deserves to win the Best Documentary Feature Oscar over Summer of Soul, mainly because of its overall excellence plus the fact that it’s an actual documentary rather a found-footage showcase.

Handicapping the nominees & predicting winners is interesting as far as it goes but everyone does it — advocacy is where it’s at.