Hindsight is a wonderful thing. If only they had known, film-makers seeking Oscar nominations this year would have gone for one of two options, making a movie set during the second World War or a film featuring Queen Elizabeth I as one of the key characters. Three of this year's major Oscar contenders are set during that war - Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line and La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful) - and two feature that queen - Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth.
It is conceivable those five movies could make up the shortlist for best picture when the nominations for the 71st Academy Awards are announced in the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Los Angeles before the crack of dawn - at 5.30 a.m. (1.30 p.m., Irish time) - next Tuesday morning.
There are 281 feature films eligible for Oscars this year, five more than last year. Academy members from nine branches have voted their nominations in 16 categories - actors vote for actors, cinematographers for cinematographers, and so on - with all voting members of the academy nominating in the best-picture category. Specially convened juries vote in the categories for documentaries, shorts, special effects, make-up and foreign-language films.
Unlike last year when James Cameron's Titanic was the foregone conclusion to dominate the nominations and the subsequent Oscars, this year is an unusually open one in which several surprises can be expected.
With period pictures to the forefront this year, the strongest contender in a contemporary setting has to be Peter Weir's excellent The Truman Show, which seems certain to secure a best actor nomination for its star, Jim Carrey, in his first serious role. Four Irish or Irish-set movies are in contention for Oscars, with mixed prospects. Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy featured on more end-of-year 10-best lists in the US than the great majority of last year's releases, but The Butcher Boy appears conspicuously lacking in Oscars promotion. Its best hopes are in the adapted screenplay and original dramatic score categories.
John Boorman has the advantage of having won the best-director award at Cannes for The General and his film has received excellent reviews in the US, which makes Boorman a strong candidate for an Oscar as best director, with Brendan Gleeson a strong possibility in the highly competitive best-actor category.
Sony Pictures Classics has been getting behind The General in terms of promotion for Oscar nominations, and also Pat O'Connor's Dancing at Lughnasa - which, however, does not appear to have achieved the necessary momentum in terms of reviews and commercial success to propel it on to the Oscar shortlists. A further problem is that its best-known actress, Meryl Streep, is also being pushed by Universal Pictures as best actress for One True Thing. Arguably the strongest "Irish" contender is Kirk Jones's Waking Ned Devine which, though set entirely in Ireland, was shot entirely on the Isle of Man. This whimsical comedy about a National Lottery scam cringe-inducingly conforms to the worst excesses of Oirishness. But North American audiences are lapping it all up, the US reviews have been mostly positive, and it has already taken more than $14 million at the box-office there. Its US distributor, Fox Searchlight, scored a surprise best picture nomination last year with another low-budget, feel-good comedy, The Full Monty, and is campaigning actively for a repeat with Waking Ned Devine this year. For all the film's grating stage-Irishness, it may well provide one piece of good news if the veteran Irish actor, David Kelly, secures an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor, which he very well might.
This is how the principal contenders shape up in the key categories; there are five nominations in each category. And some very risky predictions.