Here is an interesting article in the Hollywood Reporter about why, or why not, your favorite film will, or will not, be nominated for an Oscar this year.
It is not as simple as you might believe, but the article does give a hint as to which films most likely have the best chances to win something.
It seems like the institution of “The Oscars” itself is now as big business as the business it’s awarding statuettes to.
What do you mean “now”? It’s been big business since the beginning (or, at least, when someone noticed that “Oscar winner” and “Oscar nominee” brought in audiences, which was fairly early on in the process).
The article covers ground I’m familiar with, and the discussion on how the voter mark their ballots is pretty much a description of things like the Nebula Award voting process. It’s almost inevitable with any award that has an organization voting for it.
In many ways this is a better process than it used to be in the 30s, when everybody at a studio was told to mark their ballots for studio films. Sometimes they had their ballots marked for them.
The Oscar winners do not represent either the critical favorites or the popular favorites of the year. They represent only what the various members of the academy would like the public to think that they like. (I often wonder if the academy members actually vote for their favorites or for the “middle-brow” films that make them seem classier.) It’s hardly even worth bothering to try to figure out which films will win the Oscars. The Oscar winners occasionally are the same as the critical or the popular favorites, but usually they aren’t.