With Jim Sheridan's In America up for three Oscars, Michael Dwyer uses his movie wizardry to predict the winners in tomorrow night's Academy Awards
The consensus is that tomorrow night's 76th Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood is a foregone conclusion - The Return of the King, the third film in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, will sweep the board, and the acting trophies will go to Charlize Theron, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Renee Zellweger. However, there are many reasons to treat all these supposed certainties with caution.
The Oscars are a month earlier this year, narrowing the timescale for voters to see all the nominated films. It has not helped that there has been confusion surrounding the provision of "screeners" - video and DVD copies for the electorate - because of piracy concerns. It should also be borne in mind that there were many surprises, in terms of both omissions and inclusions, when the nominees were announced last month. And it's worth noting that there were several upsets at last year's ceremony, most notably when Roman Polanski and Adrien Brody surged past the assumed front-runners to take the best director and best actor Oscars for The Pianist.
In that context, caution is recommended in attempting to second-guess the decisions of the 5,803 Academy members who were eligible to vote before the polls closed last Tuesday evening.
Irish interest resides in Jim Sheridan's In America, which has three nominations in key categories - best actress (Samantha Morton), supporting actor (Djimon Hounsou) and original screenplay (Jim, Naomi and Kirsten Sheridan).
The film faces an uphill battle in all three categories, but Sheridan is an Academy favourite whose films have received 16 Oscar nominations since his début with My Left Foot. Consequently, In America could well spring a surprise tomorrow night, possibly by wresting the screenplay award from hot favourite Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation).
The other film of Irish interest is the best short documentary nominee, Chernobyl Heart, which prominently features the work of Adi Roche's Chernobyl Children's Project; it appears destined to take home the Oscar.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King leads the field with 11 nominations, followed by Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (10), Cold Mountain (7), Seabiscuit (7) and Mystic River (6).
Best Picture
The Return of the King
Initially regarded as a high-risk venture, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy has been a massive critical and commercial success, with the final instalment, The Return of the King, recently becoming just the second film in cinema history (after Titanic) to take over $1 billion at the international box office. The first two films in the series collected Oscars only in technical categories, and the wisdom is that the Academy will make amends by garlanding the final chapter with the major accolade, even though a fantasy film has never won the best picture Oscar in the past. The new film has received no acting nominations, but that's also the case with fellow nominees Seabiscuit and Master and Commander, while Mystic River is up for two acting awards and Lost in Translation for just one. It is simply unthinkable that The Return of the King will not win as a reward for the achievement that is the entire trilogy.
Best Director
Peter Jackson
Sofia Coppola, the writer-director of Lost in Translation, makes Academy history as the first American woman ever to be nominated for the best director Oscar, an award no woman has ever won. The only other US director on the shortlist - and the only former winner of the award - is Clint Eastwood for Mystic River. Completing the nominees are a New Zealander, Peter Jackson (The Return of the King); an Australian, Peter Weir (Master and Commander); and a Brazilian, Fernando Meirelles (City of God), whose co-director Katia Lund is, controversially, not cited in the nominations. Jackson has to be the front-runner, with the widely-respected Weir and Eastwood likely to provide the strongest competition.
Best Actor
Bill Murray
Last year this award was widely regarded as a battle between Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson, and then Adrien Brody slipped through and won. There are two firm front-runners again this year - Sean Penn taking his fourth nomination for Mystic River, and Bill Murray securing his first for Lost in Translation. Ben Kingsley, who won the best actor Oscar for Gandhi in 1983, is back for House of Sand and Fog, and Jude Law, a former best supporting actor nominee, is shortlisted for Cold Mountain. The dark horse is Johnny Depp, who surprised most people when he won the Screen Actors Guild award last Sunday for Pirates of the Caribbean, and Depp could well emulate Brody's achievement of last year. This is the toughest acting race to predict, and while Penn has the advantage of rave reviews for another recent release, 21 Grams, and Depp cannot be discounted, I'm backing Bill.
Best Actress
Charlize Theron
South African actress Theron deserves to win the Oscar for her raw, revelatory and unforgettable portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, and her only strong competitor is the only US nominee, former winner Diane Keaton for Something's Gotta Give. Completing the shortlist are Samantha Morton (In America), Naomi Watts (21 Grams) and the most unexpected nominee, 13-year-old New Zealander Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider).
Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Clarkson
Two former Oscar winners are back in contention: Holly Hunter (Thirteen) and Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River). A best actress nominee in the past two years, Renee Zellweger is the favourite to win for Cold Mountain, but she could easily lose out to the highly-respected Patricia Clarkson (Pieces of April) or Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog). This is very hard to call, but . . .
Best Supporting Actor
Tim Robbins
Tim Robbins, a former best director nominee for Dead Man Walking, is the one to beat here, on his first acting nomination for Mystic River, and he should coast it, even though voters keen to reward In America may well give the Oscar to Djimon Hounsou. The other nominees are Alec Baldwin (The Cooler), Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) and Benicio Del Toro (21 Grams), a former winner of this award for Traffic.
Best Original Screenplay
Sofia Coppola
This time collaborating with his daughters Naomi and Kirsten, Jim Sheridan gets his third screenplay nomination for In America, his fifth feature film. The only US nominees are the Pixar team of writers behind Finding Nemo and Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation. Quebecois writer-director Denys Arcand is nominated for The Barbarian Invasions, as is British writer Steven Knight for Dirty Pretty Things. Only the Sheridans have a realistic chance of stopping Coppola.
Best Screenplay Adaptation
Brian Helgeland
This is probably the toughest category for The Return of the King, where it faces formidable opposition from Mystic River, Seabiscuit and American Splendor. The longest shot is City of God. I suspect that Brian Helgeland (Mystic River), a former winner for his LA Confidential screenplay, will edge out Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the married couple who wrote and directed American Splendor.
Best Foreign-language Film
The Barbarian Invasions
Always the most unpredictable category, this field lost many front-runners in the nomination process, chiefly Osama and Good Bye, Lenin! The five that made the shortlist - from a record 55 national entries - are Evil (Sweden), Zelary (Czech Republic), Twilight Samurai (Japan), Twin Sisters (Netherlands) and The Barbarian Invasions (Canada). Evil and Zelary cannot be ruled out, but Denys Arcand seems unbeatable for his superb Barbarian Invasions.
The 76th Academy Awards ceremony, compered by Billy Crystal, begins at 5.30 p.m. tomorrow at the Kodak Theater in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles (1.30 a.m. Monday, Irish time). Live coverage begins on BBC 1 at 12.50 a.m. and continues until about 5 a.m. Edited highlights will be shown on Monday at 9.30 p.m. on Network 2 and at 11.15 p.m. on BBC 1.