How do this year’s best picture nominations stack up to the past?

UCLA’s back in the Final Four. LACMA has reopened. And though I’m generally opposed to carrot cake on principle, after reading this, I might have to reconsider. (Turmeric. Of course!)

Also: The Oscars are still about three weeks away. But at least now I know what I’m eating while watching the show.

I’m Glenn Whipp, awards columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope’s Friday newsletter.

Ranking the Oscar best picture nominees from the past five years

When the Lakers and Dodgers won titles last year, I didn’t hear many people complaining, saying that their championships should come with an asterisk. Or maybe they did, but I was just too busy celebrating to hear their whining. (And, no, those illegal fireworks were most definitely not coming from my house. Somewhere on my street, maybe, but, I repeat, not my house.)

Which is why I have little patience for people protesting that this year’s Oscars are somehow tainted because theaters were mostly shut down and studios shuffled movies out of the season or, I don’t know, they tried watching “Mank” three times but could never get through it. I understand that the Oscars are different this year. Watching the movies at home isn’t as satisfying as sitting in a theater next to someone who keeps whispering confused questions, wondering if that’s really Bill Nye the Science Guy playing Upton Sinclair in “Mank.” (Yes it is. And, God, how I miss those annoying people sitting next to me in movie theaters.)

But just because the experience of watching the movies in our living rooms wasn’t as enjoyable doesn’t mean that the movies themselves were somehow inferior. At least, I think. But to road-test that theory, I decided to rank the last five years of best picture nominees to see how 2020 measured up. (And, no, as one astute reader points out, you do not have to be a dad to enjoy “Ford v Ferrari” or “Hell or High Water.” Also: If you like those two movies, you should definitely find “News of the World,” starring Dad Cinema Hall of Famer Tom Hanks.)

‘One more!’ How Chadwick Boseman embraced life

To watch Chadwick Boseman in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is to see an artist fully committing to life. As Levee, an ambitious trumpet player fighting for his place in a system rigged against him, Boseman delivers a spellbinding performance, brash and charming, but also, underneath his bravado, deeply wounded by loss and injustice.

“Levee is ultimately a metaphor for America,” says George C. Wolfe, who directed the film adaptation of the 1982 August Wilson play. “How can you go forward into the future if you are haunted and controlled by the horror of the past?”

Levee would be Boseman’s final role, and his performance has won him a host of awards, positioning him as the favorite to win an Oscar posthumously. The movie was filmed in the summer of 2019, a year before Boseman’s death from colon cancer, a battle that the 43-year-old actor kept private. Those who collaborated with him on the film still can’t believe he’s gone, talking about him in the present tense and joyfully recalling his spirit and determination.

Chadwick Boseman earned an Oscar nomination for his final performance, in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

“He wanted to feel like he did everything he could possibly do,” says “Ma Rainey” costar Colman Domingo. “And he did.”

Forget Union Station. The Oscars should be held at the Music Center

The producers of this year’s Oscars were adamant from the outset that nominees must attend the ceremony in person ... until nominees who live in other parts of the world pushed back, citing pandemic-related travel restrictions, quarantines and that, yeah, not everyone feels OK with hopping on a trans-Atlantic flight right about now.

So, in addition to the ceremony’s Union Station setting, there will be a central hub in the United Kingdom, and other international nominees can pop in via broadcast affiliate satellite links. It’s definitely a work in progress, though producers promise that the first 60 seconds of the show will “make your knees buckle,” which does seem like maybe a case of raising expectations a bit too much. Just to be safe, I’m going to keep that carrot cake with turmeric handy. Food never fails me.

Anyway, there’s also the thought that maybe they shouldn’t be having the ceremony at Union Station to begin with, an idea that Times columnist Carolina Miranda considered this week. She suggests that the Music Center would have been a much better choice of locale, noting it boasts an “only-in-L.A. combination of architectural and showbiz history.”

“Not only is the Music Center set up for an event like the Oscars — in a place that doesn’t inconvenience thousands of passengers daily — its role as a performing arts venue would have allowed the academy to show solidarity with cultural spaces that have been shuttered, not to mention economically crushed, by the pandemic,” Carolina writes.

No argument here.

A crowd grooves under the stars at Dance DTLA, the Music Center’s regular dance party on its recently refurbished plaza.

(Music Center)