Anyone looking for even the slimmest connection to horses among the eight films contending for Best Picture honors Sunday night at the Oscars will be sorely disappointed. “The Favourite” is not, in fact, about the 3-year-old Coliseum’s ability to burn money, but the period piece does feature a few steeds pulling carriages, doing their best to distance themselves from the despicable humans taking up the rest of the wildly overrated ordeal. “Black Panther,” on the other hand, offers up the thrilling image of Daniel Kaluuya saddled up in battle aboard a giant, armored rhinoceros, which is kind of what Bill Shoemaker looked like atop Forego in another mythical adventure. In an effort to distract from the arguments over whether or not “Green Book” was really “Driving Don Shirley” or Rami Malek’s teeth in “Bohemian Rhapsody” were done by the same firm that constructed Nicole Kidman’s Oscar-winning nose in “The Hours,” your correspondent assembled a blue-ribbon panel of hard-core movie buffs to offer their three favorite horse-racing movies of all time. Del Mar’s Joe Harper is also Cecile B. DeMille’s grandson. As such, Harper probably knows too much about how movies are made to be transported by their magic. As a young racing cameraman working for filmmaker Joe Burnham, he was further enlightened as to the sausage recipe. “The cinematographer on ‘The Black Stallion’ was looking for a particular shot, and we’d done some long-range stuff for a Laffit Pincay documentary that would work,” Harper said. “But they needed 35 millimeter, and we shot in 16.” Burnham didn’t blink. “We got that,” he said. “We do?” wondered Harper. “Sure,” Burnham said. “We’ll just blow up our 16 to 35. That’s what film labs are for.” Harper did allow that Mickey Rooney’s scenes of horsemanship in “The Black Stallion” were among his all-time favorites, and he also gave a nod to the surreal take on racing by the Marx Brothers in “A Day at the Races.” Harper used his third choice for the 2015 documentary “Unbranded,” the story of four cowboys riding mustangs from the Mexican to Canadian border. “It’s beautifully shot,” Harper said. “And they took the same trail I did once, rim to rim in the Grand Canyon, riding mustangs – not mules – on a trail so scary I would get off and walk.” Marketing executive Allen Gutterman is a film-festival denizen whose eclectic tastes were on display with his three choices, led by the Oscar-nominated biopic “Seabiscuit” and the modern film-noir classic “The Grifters,” with its elaborate racetrack scam. Gutterman added “It Ain’t Hay,” based on a Damon Runyon story and starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. “Through a misunderstanding, they take what they think is a worthless nag, only to discover that they’ve actually stolen Teabiscuit, the world’s greatest racehorse,” Gutterman fondly recalled. “They hide the horse in their hotel room and, well, hilarity ensues. The highlight is 200-pound Lou Costello riding in a race that lasts about 4 1/2 minutes and passes the same scenery multiple times.” In addition to “Seabiscuit” and “The Black Stallion,” Tracy Gantz of The Blood-Horse chose “The Reivers” from 1969. “How can you resist Steve McQueen as an amiable rascal who ‘borrows’ a car, trades it for a horse, and has to race the horse to get the car back?” she said. “The racing footage is good, and the humor is terrific.” Cindy Niemetz of the International Racing Bureau seconded Gantz’s choice of “The Reivers” and added “National Velvet” and “Champions,” the story of jockey Bob Champion and the great jumper Aldaniti. Trainer John Sadler tossed in another vote for “National Velvet” in addition to “Casey’s Shadow,” Martin Ritt’s dead-on take of the racing ethos, and “Boots Malone,” an unsentimental tale of the track as seen through the eyes of a jockey agent played by William Holden. “I thought Holden played me well,” said John Perrotta, whose extensive résumé of racetrack endeavors includes the representation of several riders. “Phar Lap,” the sprawling Australian biopic, was also on Perrotta’s list, along with “Let It Ride” (the “Caddyshack” of racing flicks). Radio host Steve Byk stepped up with “Phar Lap,” offered another vote for “Casey’s Shadow,” and added “The Killing,” Stanley Kubrick’s dark racetrack heist film of 1956. “The Killing” also received support from NYRA’s Andy Serling and Los Alamitos handicapper Mark Ratzky. Both of them tempered the grim Kubrick film with comedies – Serling liked “A Day at the Races,” and Ratzky chose “Let It Ride” – while Serling added “Billy Bathgate,” with its legendary gangsters and Saratoga settings. Ratzky’s third choice was “Two Dollar Bettor,” which he described as, “A banker goes to the races for the first time with friends, gets hooked, and starts embezzling in this 1951 B movie that is an absolute hoot.” In a final effort to give the panel some credibility, Michael Blowen, the former Boston Globe film critic and now ringmaster of Old Friends Equine in Kentucky, was asked for his top three. They were conventional enough – Boots, Casey, and Seabiscuit – but with a kicker. “Filming ‘Seabiscuit’ here in Lexington, they needed an extra to play a loser in the shot with Sam Riddle at the end of the War Admiral match race,” Blowen said. “It was perfect casting. So, the only two people not applauding Seabiscuit winning were Riddle and the guy next to him. Me.”