The Globes are over and the Baftas been and gone. We have, almost imperceptibly, swung into the final stretch of this year's awards season – rattling towards the crowning Academy Awards a week on Sunday. The trophies have been polished; the seating plans finalised. Only Melissa Leo can save us now.
The Globes and the Baftas, we are told, offer vital "clues" to the eventual destination of the Oscars. So let's don the deerstalker and sift through the evidence. Slumdog Millionaire won the top prize at both the Globes and the Baftas. So did its director, Danny Boyle. Mickey Rourke was named best actor at both events, while Heath Ledger received a brace of posthumous awards in the supporting actor category. Finally, in a rare burst of confusion, Kate Winslet won two acting awards at the Globes and only one at the Baftas.
So, can we spot any leads here?
In fairness, it is not normally this obvious. The Globes and the Baftas have a tendency to diverge on a number of the key questions, ensuring that we go into the Oscars with some small frisson of tension. This year it's different. They are in such bland and blissful harmony that they threaten to turn the night of 22 February into a rubber-stamping irrelevance – the final act of a groundhog awards season that looks uncannily like the first.
Is this where we're headed: the Slumdog/Rourke/Winslet/Ledger Oscars? The evidence (and the bookies) certainly suggests so. (Slumdog, it should be noted, has also been named best film at the National Board of Review, the Directors Guild of America and the Critics' Choice awards).
Yet even in these darkest moments there remains one faint glimmer of hope. Late voters have the potential to spin this year's Oscars on its ear. May we urge them to vote for Melissa Leo, for Richard Jenkins, for Michael Shannon and the legend that is Taraji P Henson. Anything, anything to break from the script for what is shaping up to be the most pointless, predictable Oscar night in living memory.
