When looking at the jobs of people who work in or around the entertainment industry, it’s easy to miss out on distinctions regarding who does what and why. Robert Altman famously noted that his idiosyncratic films often went against the grain of what studios wanted: “They sell shoes, and I make gloves.”
This month, there have been many on Film Twitter and elsewhere who seem not to understand that while film critics and Oscar-minded entertainment journalists both write about contemporary movies, the similarities end there. To extend Altman’s metaphor: Some people are reading the tea leaves of critics’ awards for clues about the Oscars, while critics are drinking coffee.