It's hard out here for an Oscar-picker

And it’s for a good reason. While membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which gives out the Oscars, leaned heavily toward older white people for decades, recent years have seen it become more diverse – in terms of age, race, gender and nationality. That’s a great thing, but it sure makes those predictions a lot harder.

In recent years, for example, we’ve seen Best Picture winners like “The Shape of Water” (2017), a fantasy romance between a woman and a fish, and “Parasite” (2019), a South Korean thriller without a word of English. Would either have stood a chance in Oscar’s stodgier days? No way.

As a viewer, I first felt a sizable shift at the awards for 2005, when the hip hop group Three 6 Mafia won the Best Song Oscar for “It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp” over Dolly Parton’s much more hummable, Oscar-friendly “Travelin’ Thru.” (Of course, that was the same year that “Crash,” a so-so race relations movie with an all-star cast, upset the Ang Lee masterpiece “Brokeback Mountain” for Best Picture. Change is slow.)

Last year, the slap heard ‘round the world captured all the headlines, while only the third woman in history (Jane Campion, for “the Power of the Dog”) won Best Director, Ariana DeBose (Best Supporting Actress for “West Side Story”) became the first openly queer woman to win in any category, and “CODA,” a relatively low-budget family drama told largely in American Sign Language, was named Best Picture.

These ain’t your Grandpa’s Oscars.

This year, there was considerable (and silly) controversy over the nomination of Andrea Riseborough in the Best Actress category for “To Leslie,” a film almost no one had seen. Did her director campaign too much? Did her rich, powerful friends buy her the nomination by hosting elite screening parties?

I don’t know. I did see the film, however (yes, after the nominations were announced), and Riseborough’s is a stunning performance, richly deserving of academy recognition. The fact that other fine actresses – including two of the best working today, Viola Davis and Olivia Colman – were left out is an unfortunate but inevitable result of any competition with a limited number of nominees. These things are supposed to be difficult to get, after all.

The Oscars honoring the films of 2022 will be broadcast on ABC, with streaming options available as well, beginning at 8 p.m. EST on Sunday, March 12. So get out and see the nominated films and choose your favorites before settling in for what promises to be a wild night of tough-to-call races, modern Oscar-style.

I’ll provide my predictions in the issue immediately preceding the ceremony. You can provide yours now! (See “Pick the Oscars and Win!)