Some are oddly resisting the inevitability of Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s King Richard winning the Best Picture Oscar. I don’t know what their blockage is about, but they’re definitely an embodiment of that John Lennon line, “Living is easy with eyes closed.” They can’t see it or feel it. Some kind of weird obstinacy.

Consider, for example, the Best Picture predictions of three Gold Derby stalwarts — Joyce Eng, Variety‘s Jazz Tangcay and Susan King.

Eng apparently believes in all sincerity that three Best Picture contenders — Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog, Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast and Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Licorice Pizza — are more likely winners than Richard. Tangcay is actually predicting Dune (!!!) as the second most likely winner after Belfast. King has matched Eng’s enthusiasm for Campion’s film, but she doesn’t even have King Richard among her top five…mind-blowing!

Eng and King are gender-allegiance voters — they want Campion to win the Best Director Oscar (and I agree with them on this score — she’ll probably take it as a kind of life achievement tribute) and so they’re down for Dog as Best Picture — in for a penny, in for a pound.

HE to King, Tangcay and King: So far King Richard has won six Best Film audience awards at six festivals — Denver, Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Indianapolis and Chapel Hill — while Belfast has won three. What does that tell you?

Campion’s film has won no audience awards, although she won the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the Venice Film Festival, and was honored with the “Mind the Gap — Best Innovation” award at Mill Valley Film festival.

If nothing else the writing on the wall should remind you that in the Oscar realm, heart movies always beat art movies.