Two years ago, it was a foregone conclusion that Titanic would sweep all before it in the Oscar nominations and at the awards ceremony. A year ago, the clear front-runner was Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, which was seen as a virtual lock in the best picture category - until the envelope was opened on Oscars night and the award went to Shakespeare in Love.
Spielberg's company, DreamWorks, has good reason to be cautious this year, in the 72nd Academy Awards, as another of its productions, American Beauty, has led the way as the Oscar favourite since it was launched to rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. Front-runners sometimes suffer because voters may feel they don't need more support, and every vote counts this year in what has turned into one of the most wide open - and most competitive - Oscar races in memory.
The only certainty is that few, if any, movies released in the first half of 1999 will make a dent on the nominations, and the great majority of the nominees will be drawn from the cluster of pictures released in the US during the last six or seven weeks of the year and still fresh in the memories of the electorate.
There are 244 films eligible for Oscar nominations this year - down 37 from last year's record figure of 281. Irish interest resides in two fine literary adaptations, one made by an Irishman in England and the other by an Englishman in Ireland - Neil Jordan's The End of the Affair and Alan Parker's Angela's Ashes.
Jordan's film will benefit from the strong critical support it has earned in the US and from its prominence in the Golden Globe nominations, where it received four but did not win anything on the night. Its best prospects for Oscar nominations are for best actress (Julianne Moore), adapted screenplay (Jordan), costume design (Sandy Powell) and original music score (Michael Nyman), although it could well figure in other categories, and while it may be shortlisted for best picture, Jordan stands a solid chance of a best director nomination.
Mixed US reviews will not help Parker's Frank McCourt adaptation, although again he must be a contender in the very crowded field for best director. The Irish costume designer, Consolata Boyle, may well receive her first Oscar nomination for Angela's Ashes, which could also be nominated for score (John Williams), cinematography (Michael Seresin), production design (Geoffrey Kirkland) and film editing (Gerry Hambling). Its prospects of acting nominations look very slim.
The nominations will be announced at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Los Angeles at 5.30 a.m. (1.30 p.m., Irish time) next Tuesday. This is how the principal contenders shape up in the key categories - there are five nominations in each category - along with some very risky predictions.
Best Picture
American Beauty clearly has the momentum behind it, and The Insider and The Hurricane appear to have been moving ahead of the other candidates over the past two months. As with the best director category (see below), that leaves more than a dozen strong movies in contention for the other two slots on the shortlist. I will dare to stick my neck out very far indeed and pick two huge commercial successes to complete the line-up.
Prediction: American Beauty, The Hurricane, The Insider, The Sixth Sense, Toy Story 2
Best Director
The nominations for the annual awards of the Directors Guild of America are always a good pointer here, given that there have only been four years when the DGA winner did not go on to win the Oscar for best director. The last time was in 1995 when Ron Howard won the DGA for Apollo 13, but failed to get an Oscar nomination and the Academy Award went to Mel Gibson for Braveheart.
In keeping with the unpredictable nature of the present awards season, there were several surprises when this year's DGA nominations were announced last month. As expected, Sam Mendes and Michael Mann are on the shortlist, for American Beauty and The Insider respectively. However, they are joined by two directors whose movies had not figured prominently in all the many recent awards - Frank Darabont for his Stephen King adaptation, The Green Mile and M. Night Shyamalan for The Sixth Sense. In another surprise the fifth slot went to Spike Jonze for his first feature, Being John Malkovich.
Among the more fancied candidates which did not make the shortlist were three of the five Golden Globe nominees for best director - Neil Jordan (The End of the Affair), Norman Jewison (The Hurricane) and Anthony Minghella (The Talented Mr Ripley) - along with Paul Thomas Anderson (All About My Mother), David Lynch (The Straight Story), Pedro Almodovar (All About My Mother), Alan Parker (Angela's Ashes), Mike Leigh (Topsy-Turvy), John Lasseter (Toy Story 2), David O. Russell (Three Kings), Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) and the late Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut) who, in one of the most glaring omissions in the Academy's history, never won on Oscar for direction.
Clearly, the voters are spoiled for choice this year and this section could yield a few bombshells on Tuesday. Mendes, Mann and Jewison appear assured of places, but the remaining two positions on the shortlist could go anywhere.
Prediction: Pedro Almodovar, Norman Jewison, Neil Jordan, Michael Mann, Sam Mendes.
Best Actor
The big upset in this category last year was the omission of Jim Carrey for The Truman Show. Back in contention for his portrayal of the late comedian Andy Kaufmann in Man on the Moon, Carrey won't have it any easier this year. The two frontrunners are both former winners of the best supporting actor Oscar - Denzel Washington (who won for Glory in 1989) for The Hurricane, and Kevin Spacey (a winner for The Usual Suspects in 1995) for American Beauty.
Veterans in contention include the 62-year-old Terence Stamp for The Limey, 79-year-old former stuntman Richard Farnsworth for The Straight Story, and Kirk Douglas, who is 83 and has never won an acting Oscar, for Diamonds. The latter is getting a heavy push from the Oscars-savvy company, Miramax, which is also behind Matt Damon's terrific performance as The Talented Mr Ripley.
Disney is pushing Bruce Willis hard for his enigmatic, restrained performance in The Sixth Sense. The versatile Australian actor, Russell Crowe, is likely to pip Al Pacino, his co-star in The Insider. And then there are Jim Broadbent (as W.S. Gilbert in Topsy-Turvy), Sean Penn (Sweet and Low-down), Ralph Fiennes (The End of the Af- fair), Bob Hoskins (Felicia's Journey), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Flawless) and regular nominee Tom Hanks (The Green Mile).
In the final reckoning Farnsworth could just scrape the fifth slot from Carrey.
Prediction: Russell Crowe, Matt Damon, Richard Farnsworth, Kevin Spacey, Denzel Washington
Best Actress
This seems to be the easiest category to predict this year, with five clear front-runners: Annette Bening, American Beauty; Janet McTeer, Tumbleweeds; Julianne Moore, The End of the Affair; Meryl Streep, Music of the Heart; and the extraordinary Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry. If Streep secures the nomination, it will be her 12th, bringing her level with Katharine Hepburn as the most nominated actor in Oscars history. If anyone displaces one of those five, it will be Reese Witherspoon (Election) or Sigourney Weaver (A Map of the World). Longer shots are Julia Roberts (Notting Hill), Susan Sarandon (Anywhere But Here), Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother), Kate Winslet (Holy Smoke!) and Winona Ryder (Girl, Interrupted)
Prediction: Annette Bening, Janet McTeer, Julianne Moore, Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep.
Best Supporting Actress
The shortlist could be made up almost entirely of first-time nominees. The strongest contenders are Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener, both for Being John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted), former nominee Julianne Moore (Magnolia), Chloe Sevigny (Boys Don't Cry), Toni Collette (The Sixth Sense), Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown), Natalie Portman (Anywhere But Here), and former Oscar winners Sissy Spacek (The Straight Story) and Jessica Lange (Titus).
Prediction: Angelina Jolie, Catherine Keener, Julianne Moore, Samantha Morton, Chloe Sevigny
Best Supporting Actor
Twice nominated in the best actor category, Tom Cruise is a shoo-in for his rare venture into indie land for Magnolia. Michael Caine, who won this category in 1986 for Hannah and Her Sisters, should be back for The Cider House Rules, and John Malkovich may be in for playing himself in, what else, Being John Malkovich. Haley Joel Osment, the remarkable young child star of The Sixth Sense, has to be a front-runner and will probably eclipse the three fine actors who played the young Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes. That leaves a battle royal for the fifth slot, with Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) likely to edge it from Jude Law and Philip Seymour Hoffman (both for The Talented Mr Ripley), Chris Cooper (American Beauty), Max Von Sydow (Snow Falling On Cedars), Stephen Rea (The End of the Affair), and the darkest horse in the race, Christopher Plummer (The Insider), who just might shade it over Malkovich.
Prediction: Michael Caine, Tom Cruise, Michael Clarke Duncan, Haley Joel Osment, Christopher Plummer.
Best Original Screenplay
There are two truly original screenplays which must be sure-shots here - Alan Ball for American Beauty and Charlie Kaufmann for Being John Malkovich. And M. Night Shyamalan should also be on the shortlist for his ingeniously plotted The Sixth Sense. The battle for the final two places will be closely contested between Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia), Barry Levinson (Liberty Heights), Richard Curtis (Notting Hill), David O. Russell and John Ridley (Three Kings), John Roach and Mary Sweeney The Straight Story), Kimberly Peirce and Andy Bienen (Boys Don't Cry), and John Lasseter's Toy Story 2 team. A tough call.
Prediction: American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, The Sixth Sense, Three Kings.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Neil Jordan, who received the best original screenplay Oscar for The Crying Game in 1992, should be assured of a nomination here for his Graham Greene adaptation, The End of the Affair. Novelist John Irving should be on the list for the adaptation of his own The Cider House Rules, as should Eric Roth and Michael Mann for their adaptation of the Vanity Fair article which inspired The Insider.
In a formidable field the other key contenders include Alan Parker and Laura Jones (Angela's Ashes), Anthony Minghella (The Talented Mr Ripley), Atom Egoyan (Felicia's Journey), Frank Darabont (The Green Mile), Patricia Rozema (Mansfield Park), Alexander Payne (Election), and Stanley Kubrick and Frederic Raphael (Eyes Wide Shut).
Prediction: The Cider House Rules, The End of the Affair, Eyes Wide Shut, The Insider, The Talented Mr Ripley
Best Foreign Language Film
A record number of countries - 47 - submitted national entries this year. As ever, anything is possible in this category which regularly ignores major achievements (such as Festen last year) in favour of unremarkable movies. The notable contenders include Earth (India), Three Seasons (Vietnam), Aimee & Jaguar (Germany), Solomon and Gaenor (Wales), No One Writes to the Colonel (Mexico), and The Colour of Paradise (Iran). However, the most likely nominees are the following five.
Prediction: All About My Mother (Spain), The Cup (Bhutan), East-West (France), Mifune (Denmark), Rosetta (Belgium).
Michael Dwyer will analyse the Oscar nominations on Wednesday's Arts page. The 72nd Academy Awards will be presented at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on March 26th