It’s Sinners versus everybody else in the latest stack of anonymous Oscar ballots

Still, credit where it’s due: Variety‘s latest meditation on the form—published this week, in the immediate aftermath of the Oscar voting period for this year’s awards closing—has a bit of width and narrative to it. In this case, that means presenting the full ballots of 7 different voters, drawn from different demographics of voting branch, age, and race, to see where their heads are at, while also tracking various trends in the wider Oscar voting pool. For instance: Sean Penn voters are apparently slower than everybody else, as the One Battle After Another co-star reportedly got a last-minute bump in the last 24 hours of voting for Best Supporting Actor. As opposed to Timothée Chalamet fans, who… were not especially in evidence, with the general conclusion being that Best Actor is a heat between Sinners‘ Michael B. Jordan and OBAA‘s Leonardo DiCaprio.

Indeed, the fight between those two specific movies seems to be the prevailing narrative this year, especially with the appearance of a couple of ballots indicating that Ryan Coogler’s massively nominated Southern vampire film is getting boxes ticked all the way down the line by at least some portion of the Oscar electorate. It is of the nature of this kind of conversation that is really difficult not to build quick and dirty mental snapshots of certain voting trends from these brief snippets, whether they’re being provided by the “International, craft branch, over 65, white” who called Coogler’s movie “long and repetitive,” or the “American, artisans branch, under 65, Black” who called One Battle After Another “the most problematic movie for the Black community since maybe Green Book.” (On a less contentious note, we’re also partial to the infinitely dad-coded “American, craft branch, over 65, white” who voted F1 for Best Picture, and voted Chloé Zhao as Best Director for Hamnet… because F1 director Joseph Kosinski wasn’t in the race.)

If you’re looking for actual insight here, a), good luck, and, b), okay, Jessie Buckley’s probably going to win an Oscar. (Her Hamnet performance appeared on five of seven ballots.) Also, one of the most interesting races is likely to pop up in Best Supporting Actress: Wunmi Mosaku’s riveting turn in Sinners is going up against Amy Madigan’s leave-it-all-on-the-field villain role in Weapons, which should make for a pretty good match-up. As for the rest: Well, we’ll know on Sunday, March 15, won’t we?