Success for Wagner Moura, Hamnet and Stellan Skarsgård at the Golden Globes has narrowed the Oscars race and set up a number of intriguing fights to watch. Get ready for Jessie Buckley v Rose Byrne, and Timothée Chalamet v Wagner Moura, just two of the five major Oscar races that should be especially fun to watch and that the Golden Globes just helped to clarify. Only a few hundred people vote for the Globes and more than 10,000 for the Oscars, so it shouldn't make sense that they are such important factors in the Oscar race. But then this is show business, where hype and image-making rule, where being perceived as a winner is almost as good as being one. The Globes may be confusing in the way they wrangle categories, and they may be miniscule in their voting numbers, but they offer visibility, momentum, and a sense of who is already considered the "best something or other", which creates an outsized impact on the Oscars. Dividing the major awards into separate categories for drama and for musical or comedy films makes the Globes off-kilter as Oscar predictors, but that very separation tends to narrow the race and set up the most engaging head-to-head battles. Two years ago, Lily Gladstone's Globes win in drama for Killers of the Flower Moon and Emma Stone's win in comedy for Poor Things created a down-to-the wire race leading to Stone's second Oscar. This year gave us similar mano-a-manos in the lead acting categories. Buckley has long been considered the Oscar favourite for Hamnet, the high-powered film about Shakespeare's wife grieving their small son, and her Globes win in drama solidified her frontrunner status. But Byrne has emerged as her only true competition after winning in the musical/comedy category for the small independent film If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. You really have to stretch the definition of comedy to understand how Legs ended up in that category. There are moments of frantic scrambling in the film but Byrne's performance as the harried mother of a sick child is fraught with tension and anxiety. Slippery categories aside, though, add Byrne's Globes victory to her wins at the Berlin Film Festival and with the New York and Los Angeles critics groups, and she can't be ruled out. The Globes' weird category split has created a real race. One narrative took hold almost as soon as Marty Supreme was first shown in the autumn: that the Oscar was Timothée Chalamet's to lose for his role as an annoying would-be ping-pong champion. He is brilliant and fascinating as a character who could have been just grating. His Globe win in comedy strengthens that narrative, but only to a point, because he now has competition from Wagner Moura, who won in drama, beating Michael B Jordan in Sinners. Moura, who gives a brilliant, layered and charismatic performance in the Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent, had a lot riding on the Globes. Winner of the best actor award at Cannes, he was widely considered a sure thing for an Oscar nomination until the Actor awards (previously the SAG awards) nominations were announced last week and Moura, along with every other performer in a film not in the English language, was left out. Since actors are the largest voting block among Academy Awards voters, that wasn't a great sign. It's true that Globes members (who are international journalists) are more likely to embrace a performance not in English, but still: that win puts Moura firmly back in the running.  Some years, one performer easily swoops up every major predictor award en route to the Oscars, the way Kieran Culkin did last year as supporting actor in A Real Pain – Golden Globe, Bafta, SAG award and Oscar, he got them all. This is not one of those years. The Globes' supporting categories are, in fact, similar to the Oscars because they are not separated into drama and comedy. And this year's Globes blew both supporting races wide open. There was no real consensus about supporting actor going in, with Benicio del Toro considered slightly more likely to triumph for One Battle After Another over Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein. Del Toro had several critics' groups awards and Elordi the Critics' Choice. Stellan Skarsgård's Globes win for the Norwegian film Sentimental Value adds a new twist. As with Moura, the international Globe voters may have been partial to a non-English-language performance. But Skarsgård now has "winner" written all over him and momentum moving forward. Just four days before the Globes, the awards site Gold Derby wrote that Amy Madigan "jumps to No 1 in best supporting actress odds" for the horror film Weapons, after her wins at the Critics' Choice Awards and with the New York and Los Angeles film critics groups. And after Teyana Taylor's Globes win for One Battle After Another, a cheeky but accurate post on Vulture's live blog read, "RIP to Amy Madigan being the Oscar frontrunner (2025-26)". Those swerves make the supporting races the least predictable of the year. Paul Thomas Anderson gives acceptance speeches that are modest, smart, generous and short, which is handy, because he has been winning a lot. After its Globes victory in the best musical or comedy category, One Battle After Another is still the Oscar frontrunner for best picture. And Anderson's wins for both director and screenplay (unlike the Oscars, the Globes don't separate the screenwriting category into original and adapted) is such a sign of strength that One Battle is the safest Oscar bet of all. But Hamnet's Globes win in drama makes it the strongest competition in the unlikely event of an upset. Having Steven Spielberg, one of Hamnet's producers, accept the award gave the film an extra boost of visibility at just the right moment. With voting for Academy Award nominations starting the day after the Globes winners were announced, this year's ceremony was perfectly timed to have maximum impact on the Oscars. Cleverly done, Golden Globes. The 98th Oscars will take place on Sunday 15 March. -- If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.