King takes on the webmaster in Oscars battle royal

Colin Firth will be crowned Best Actor. Natalie Portman will dance away with Best Actress


Colin Firth will be crowned Best Actor. Natalie Portman will dance away with Best Actress. But not even DONALD CLARKEcan predict which film will bag the Oscar tomorrow night

WELL, WE’RE nearly there. Awards season has, by our reckoning, been trundling on since the early 18th century. As a result, when the Oscars are finally handed out tomorrow, there should be relatively few surprises in the more prestigious categories.

Unless an atom bomb lands on the Kodak Auditorium, Colin Firth will take home the best actor statuette for The King's Speech. There is the tiniest possibility that Annette Bening, four times an Oscar bridesmaid, might, thanks to a sentimental surge, beat Natalie Portman to best actress, but, given that the younger actor has taken every gong to date, such an eventuality can be classed alongside such unlikely occurrences as meteor strikes or alien visitations. Bening was good in The Kids are All Right. Portman's terrific turn in Black Swan,however, features the razzle-dazzle and creative hysteria that Academy voters really crave.

The only acting race that might spring a surprise is that for best supporting actress. Melissa Leo, entertaining as a cigarette-sucking Irish-American in The Fighter, remains a marginal favourite with most bookies. But Hailee Steinfeld, nominated for True Grit,is fast catching up on her more experienced rival.

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Two factors act in Steinfeld’s favour. Firstly, absurdly nudged into the supporting rather than lead category by her studio, the 14-year-old has by far the larger part. (Indeed, she appears in virtually every scene.) Secondly, Leo has blotted her copybook slightly by paying for advertisements in the trade papers urging voters to tick her box. Such notices are normally placed on actors’ behalf by the studios. The move has been seen as a little self-serving.

Christian Bale, who plays Leo's son in The Fighter, does everything Oscar craves: he lost weight, he plays an addict, he steals every scene. It's now too late for a trademark Bale tirade – remember his notorious meltdown on the set of Terminator: Salvation– to scupper his inevitable march towards the winner's podium.

So it’s all sewn up?

Not quite. As was the case last year at this point, the most important competition – Best Motion Picture – is still very much up for grabs. For the first two-thirds of awards season, The Social Network,David Fincher's study of the Facebook phenomenon, remained the runaway favourite. Then The King's Speechwon several prestigious guild awards and, though always expected to top the Oscar nomination chart, did even better than anticipated with a bulky 12 nods. The fickle Oscarologists duly swung their weight behind Tom Hooper's study of George VI's struggles with a speech impediment.

The race has been sold as a battle between old and new. In recent years, the Oscars appeared to move away from their addiction to heartwarming true stories set in the elegant past. The days when such worthy slogs as Out of Africa, The Last Emperorand Driving Miss Daisyruled the ceremony appeared to be fading. Recent best-picture victories by such films as No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Lockerand The Departedsuggested that the voters had finally opened themselves up to slightly less staid material.

The King's Speechis a fine film, but nothing about it speaks of innovation. The Social Network, with its gloomy cinematography, Trent Reznor score and interest in new media, is about as "dangerous" as Oscar-winning films get. Let's set aside the fact that, at 48, Fincher is hardly a bright young thing. Never mind that the film concerns itself with squabbling middle-class white Americans. A win by The Social Networkwould convince the Academy it had entered, well, the 20th century anyway. A victory for The King's Speechcould be seen as a step backwards.

In one respect, however, the Oscar people have already secured a significant moral victory. For many years populists complained that the films nominated for best picture never made any money. The Academy’s decision to increase nominations from five to 10 was partly an attempt to counteract this perception. But something odd has happened this year. The five films nominated for best director – that’s to say the pictures that probably would have been shortlisted for best picture under the old system – have all done surprisingly well at the US box office.

A few days ago, both the scarily arty Black Swanand the scarily English The King's Speechtrundled past the $100 million mark. Having taken $165 million, True Gritis a genuine smash in its home territories. To put this in perspective, The Hurt Locker, last year's winner, made a staggeringly tiny $17m in the US.

So, whatever happens in the Kodak Theatre tomorrow, the organisers can allow themselves a gentle pat on the back. The Oscars are relevant again.