There's no runaway favourite to sweep the boards at the 71st Academy Awards, as there was last year when Titanic dominated the nominations and the awards themselves and its director, James Cameron, became the self-proclaimed "King of the World". There's no Billy Crystal to host the show this year with his razor-sharp wit. In his place will be former presenter - and former Oscar-winner - Whoopi Goldberg, a merely adequate compere to judge by earlier form. But it could have been worse - they could have brought back David Letterman.
And there will be no opportunity to see the full ceremony live on terrestrial television this year. Having poached Barry Norman from the BBC, the Sky Premier subscription channel has also secured the broadcast rights to the Oscars, which Norman will link from Los Angeles on Sunday. Sky will repeat the full show at 6 p.m. on Monday, leaving terrestrial channel viewers to wait a day longer than usual, until 10.10 p.m. on Tuesday to see the edited highlights on RTE 1.
"Oscar is wearing combat fatigues this year - and a codpiece," observed Daily Variety last month after the announcement of this year's nominations. The five films with the most nominations consist of three movies set during the second World War and two period pictures featuring Queen Elizabeth I. Leading the field with 13 nominations is John Madden's Shakespeare in Love, for which Judi Dench has been nominated for her role as the queen. And Shekar Kapur's Elizabeth, for which Cate Blanchett is a nominee for her superb portrayal of the monarch as a young woman, has seven nominations. Steven Spielberg's visceral war movie, Saving Private Ryan, has the second highest number of nominations, with 11, while Terrence Malick's meditative The Thin Red Line and Roberto Benigni's blend of slapstick and pathos, La Vita e Bella, have seven nominations each. That makes Benigni's film the most nominated foreign-language film in Oscars history.
Benigni himself has achieved three personal nominations as star, director and co-writer of his film - a feat achieved in the past only by Orson Welles in 1941, Woody Allen in 1977 and Warren Beatty in both 1978 and 1981. When the notoriously flamboyant Benigni received the runner-up prize at Cannes last year he prostrated himself before the jury president, Martin Scorsese, and mimed kissing his feet. How will he top that if he wins an Oscar or two on Sunday? "I will make love to every member of the Academy," the irrepressible Benigni has declared. Which may or may not assist his campaign.
There are, incidentally, 5,557 Academy members who are eligible to vote, and the closing date for their ballots was last Tuesday afternoon. The campaigning for votes has been more vigorous than ever this year, with the New York-based company, Miramax, to the fore, as ever, littering the film trade papers with advertising and missing out on no opportunities to promote its front-runners, Shakespeare in Love and La Vita e Bella. Miramax has even used an endorsement from the Pope to promote the prospects of the Benigni movie.
The US television audience for the Oscars ceremony is so large that advertisers are paying £1 million for a 30-second slot during the show's many commercial breaks. The ceremony gets underway at 5.30 p.m. on Sunday (12.30 a.m. on Monday, Irish time) and will run for at least three-and-half hours, depending on the loquaciousness of the often cringe-inducing acceptance speeches.
In the unlikely event of disruptions - as happened in previous years when actors refused their Oscars or when a streaker ran across the stage - the most controversial element of this year's ceremony seems assured to be the honorary Oscar which the Academy is bestowing on director Elia Kazan, who has received the Oscar for best director twice, for Gentleman's Agreement in 1947 and On the Waterfront in 1954.
What stills rankles with many Academy members is that Kazan informed on eight of his Group Theatre colleagues who had once belonged to the Communist Party, when he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. However, the Academy's decision to give him an honorary Oscar was unanimous, and if there is any protest on Sunday night against Kazan, who is now 89 and ailing, it is expected to be a silent one.
Sunday's other honorary Oscar is entirely uncontentious - the Irving Thalberg Award which will be given to Norman Jewison, the Canadian producer and director of In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, Fiddler On the Roof, A Soldier's Story and Moonstruck. Here is how the nominees shape up in the key categories. While there are some glaring omissions, the standard of this year's nominations is higher than usual, making it a particularly unpredictable year. Undaunted, I will hazard some very risky predictions.
Best Picture
The Academy electorate clearly favours period pictures, and the longer the better. Last year's winner, Titanic, clocked in at three hours and 14 minutes, a minute short of the 1993 winner, Schindler's List. The shortest movie to win the best picture Oscar during the 1990s has been The Silence of the Lambs, running two minutes short of two hours - and it and Forrest Gump were the 1990 winners with a contemporary setting. This year there is a battle royal between Saving Private Ryan (167 minutes) and Shakespeare in Love (122 minutes), and the voting can be expected to be extremely tight. The only movie with even a distant hope of sneaking past them is La Vita e Bella. The non-linear structure of The Thin Red Line is sure to be a turn-off for Academy voters, and the fifth nominee, Elizabeth, is an even more distant prospect.
The Spielberg film is perceived to have the edge over Shakespeare in Love because the best picture Oscar so rarely goes to lighter material. Nevertheless, the award usually goes to the movie with the most nominations overall and the Miramax campaign has been incessant, if not verging on overkill. So I will stick my neck out very far and predict Shakespeare in Love to scrape the award from Saving Private Ryan.
Best Director
This award generally goes to the director of the best picture winner, but there have been exceptions down the years, and I expect Steven Spielberg to win his second directing Oscar (after Schindler's List), shading the English director, John Madden (Shakespeare in Love). A worthy winner here would be the Australian, Peter Weir, for The Truman Show, but his chances are bleak given that his fine film somehow failed to secure a best picture nomination. Complete long-shots are the two other nominees, Roberto Benigni (La Vita e Bella) and Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line).
Best Actress
Three young women face two veterans on the shortlist, and the younger nominees may well suffer from the presumption that they have a long way to go, that their time will come again. That said, the hot favourites are Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth and Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love, and Paltrow is perceived to have the edge. Emily Watson (Hilary & Jackie) can be expected to wait for another year - possibly as soon as next year when Angela's Ashes will be eligible.
The outsider is the acclaimed 69-year-old Brazilian actress, Fernanda Montenegro, for Central Station, but the other highly respected veteran could prove the proverbial cat among the pigeons - Meryl Streep, who receives her 11th Oscar nomination - tying her with Jack Nicholson and leaving her just one short of the record held by Katharine Hepburn.
Streep is short-listed not for Dancing at Lughnasa, but for her other 1998 film, One True Thing, in which she gives a characteristically dignified and touching performance as a caring mother and wife dying of cancer. Bizarrely, there are no plans to release the film in cinemas here. That is likely to change when, as I suspect, she edges past Blanchett and Paltrow to take home her third Oscar on Sunday night.
Best Actor
The burning question here is: Will Tom Hanks take his third Oscar in six years for Saving Private Ryan, in which he gives one of his best performances? He's strongly favoured, but no man has won best actor three times, and elevating Hanks to that status would be misguided, to say the least.
This is a fiercely difficult category to call. The only no-hoper is the youngest nominee, the gifted Edward Norton for his searing portrayal of a driven racist in American History X, which opens here on Friday. Norton's time will come again. When the nominations came out, Roberto Benigni was perceived as an also-ran; since then the Miramax machine has focussed a great deal of the La Vita e Bella promotion on this award - and Benigni this month was named best actor by the Screen Actors' Guild, most of whom also vote in the Oscars. And if he wins, the acceptance speech is sure to be a riot.
But can Benigni ease past the obstacles that are the critically lauded performances of 58-year-old Nick Nolte in Affliction and 59-year-old Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters? Nolte has only been nominated once before (for The Prince of Tides) and he is also very impressive in The Thin Red Line. If McKellen wins, the liberal members of the Academy will feel satisfied for giving the Oscar for the first time to an openly gay actor playing an openly gay character.
I suspect McKellen will just about take it over Benigni.
Best Supporting Actor
There are three former Oscar-winners here, but none has won in this category. Both Robert Duvall (up for A Civil Action) and Geoffrey Rush (Shakespeare in Love) have won the best actor award, and Billy Bob Thorton (A Simple Plan) took a screenplay Oscar for Sling Blade. The other nominees in what is an outstanding field are James Coburn, at 70 receiving his first Oscar nomination, for his revelatory performance in Affliction, and Ed Harris, who receives his second nomination, for The Truman Show.
Thornton and Duvall are the favourites, but Ed Harris is overdue Oscar recognition, and surely The Truman Show will win something. So I'm backing Harris.
Best Supporting Actress
There was only one US nominee for best actress last year and she (Helen Hunt) won. There is only one American contender for supporting actress this year - former best actress winner Kathy Bates, for Primary Colors - and she is the favourite. There is one Australian, Rachel Griffiths for Hilary & Jackie, and there are three Englishwomen - nominated for Georgy Girl in 1966, Lynn Redgrave is back for her turn as James Whale's Hungarian housekeeper in Gods and Monsters; Brenda Blethyn on her second nomination (after Secrets & Lies) for Little Voice; and Judi Dench, in her second consecutive nomination as a queen - last year as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown, this year as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love.
Featured in the film for just eight or nine minutes, Dench lights up the movie every second she's on screen. And if she and McKellen both win, as I'm predicting, two of the four Oscar-winners this year will be titled folk. Gosh, isn't Oscar coming up in the world!
Best Foreign Language Film
Anything goes in this category, which regularly defies predictions - and belief. The outsiders are Carlos Saura's Tango (Argentina), Jose Luis Garci's The Grandfather (Spain), and Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven (Iran) which has the Miramax machine behind it. However, there are two formidable front-runners in La Vita e Bella and Central Station, and the award could easily go to either of them. As Benigni's film may be expected to be awarded elsewhere on the night, I'll hazard a bet on Central Station.
Best Original Screenplay
The quality of the nominations is of a very high standard, but the award is down to two movies, with Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman set to take it for Shakespeare in Love, ahead of Andrew Niccol's ingenious screenplay for The Truman Show. The other contenders are Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan), Roberto Benigni (La Vita e Bella) and Warren Beatty and Jeremy Pisker (Bulworth).
Best Adapted Screenplay
Having won the Writers' Guild award this month for his adept adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Out of Sight, Scott Frank looks certain to take home an Oscar for his work. His strongest opposition are Elaine May (Primary Colors) and Scott B. Smith (A Simple Plan). The other nominees are writer-directors Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line) and Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters).
In other categories
Sandy Powell receives two of the five nominations for costume design, for Velvet Goldmine and Shakespeare in Love, and she should win for the latter. Randy Newman has the distinction of achieving three Oscar nominations in three different categories. His best shot is best original musical or comedy score for A Bug's Life, where he may pip Stephen Warbeck's score for Shakespeare in Love.
Newman's That'll Do from Babe: Pig in the City is in for best original song, an award most likely to go to Diane Warren's I Don't Want to Miss a Thing from Armageddon (and will we have the spectacle of Aerosmith performing it at the Oscars?) In best original dramatic score, Newman's music for Pleasantville is unlikely to win over one of the two war movie scores, Saving Private Ryan, which earns John Williams his 37th nomination, and my tip, Hans Zimmer's music for The Thin Red Line, which may well win that film its only Oscar.
Shakespeare in Love should add to its haul in the categories of art direction and make-up, giving it a total of six Oscars, while Saving Private Ryan should collect further Oscars for cinematography, film editing, sound and sound effects editing, bringing its total to five. The ceremony's only other award - excluding the shorts and documentaries, none of which I've seen - is for visual effects and it deserves to and most likely will go to What Dreams May Come.