Mick LaSalle March 15, 2021Updated: March 17, 2021, 6:40 am This year’s Academy Awards have been postponed to April 25. Photo: Robyn Beck, AFP via Getty Images The 93rd Academy Award nominations have been announced, for what will be remembered as the year of the asterisk. The movies under consideration were released over a period of 14 months (extending from January 2020 through February 2021) instead of the typical 12, and most weren’t released conventionally, but rather straight to streaming services. For the first time, we can’t distinguish between popular successes and critical darlings, because this year there were no popular successes — at least none that can be measured. There is no box office count for entities such as Netflix, HBO Max and Amazon Prime. We can’t even be sure that all or most of these films would have been nominated in a normal year, when we consider all the films that have been held for release due to the pandemic.