Tonight, the great and good of Hollywood will convene to celebrate the best of film-making in 2019 at the 92nd Academy Awards.
As with last year, there will be no main host again this year. Personally, I liked this approach. It cut down unnecessary faffing around and brought the runtime of the show down to a manageable three-and-a-bit hours. OK, some of the guest presenter 'banter' was dreadful but that's par for the course with things like this. Last year opened with Queen and Adam Lambert absolutely smashing it, so hopefully there'll be a similar high-energy start to tonight's proceedings.
It has become a tradition for me to predict the nominations and the winners in the main six categories (the four acting categories, Best Director and Best Picture). I've done this since 2003 with varying degrees of success. Last year, I got 4 out of 6 (as Olivia Colman and Green Book took the respective prizes, instead of Glenn Close and Roma). I have a feeling there'll be less of a surprise tonight...
So, without further ado, here are my predictions for who will win.
Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern (Marriage Story)
With a SAG Award, Critics' Choice Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe already in the bag for her role as divorce lawyer Nora Fanshaw, it's going to be unlikely to hear anyone else's name. And rightly so. Dern's performance is superb (in a film full of superb performances); her amazing rant about the disparity between mothers and fathers- that women are meant to be perfect and woe betide if they're not, whilst men can get away with being lazy parents- is a particular highlight. Dern doesn't play a stereotypical hard bitch- she's warm, empathetic, but totally committed to getting what's right and fair for Nicole (Scarlett Johansson).
Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt (Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood)
I'll be honest with you: I didn't rate Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood at all. I found it overlong, self-indulgent and fairly offensive in places. And, with further honesty, Pitt's performance as stuntman Cliff Booth who may (or may not) have killed his wife is easily my least favourite of the five that have been nominated. But, like Dern, he's swept the boards so it feels like it's his turn.
Best Actress: Renée Zellweger (Judy)
Whilst the film itself is a bit patchy and several scenes just feel too fantastical or made-up, there's no denying that it's a powerhouse performance by Zellweger as the incomparable Judy Garland. Playing Garland's insecurity and passion to the hilt, it's the kind of performance that Oscars are made for. It never feels showy or look-at-me-I'm-acting-ma, Zellweger disappears into the icon and gives her life.
Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)
I would dearly, dearly, DEARLY love Jonathan Pryce's name to be read out in this category but I don't see it happening. As with all of my other acting predictions, Phoenix has swept the awards boards so it feels like a bit of a foregone conclusion. Despite what I think about the film (and my opinions on it are well known if you read the blog or listen to the podcast), I do concede that Phoenix puts in a committed performance as stand-up comedian Arthur Fleck who becomes the Clown Prince of Crime. Is the film deserving of this accolade? I'm not sure. Is Phoenix? Yes.
Best Director: Sam Mendes (1917)
Best Picture: 1917
Aside from sharing the Critics' Choice award with Bong Joon Ho, Mendes has been the standout winner in the director category for 1917, scooping the Golden Globes, the BAFTA and (importantly) the Directors' Guild Award. Again, it feels like a foregone conclusion for him to snag his second Best Director Oscar (20 years after winning for American Beauty).
The lack of a Best Film Editing nomination for 1917 feels egregious, because a lot of the work of making it look like a single take is done in the editing suite, but veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins thoroughly deserves his nod (and deserves to win). As a film, 1917 isn't just style over substance; you're on the soldiers' side as they race against time to stop a battalion from walking into an ambush. Buoyed up by a stellar cast (including Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, and Benedict Cumberbatch), these are [or should be] star-making roles for George Mackay and Dean-Charles Chapman. The film is technically assured and has a heart behind it. It would be a truly deserving Best Picture winner.
Hopefully I'll be watching the broadcast live in the early hours of Monday morning, and I'll post as soon as I can with my thoughts about the ceremony and all the winners.
Fonda received his first Oscar nomination in the Best Actor category for playing Tom Joad in The Grapes Of Wrath (1940) [but would lose out to James Stewart for The Philadelphia Story (1940)]. It would be a colossal 41 years until the Academy saw fit to nominate him for a second time, again as Best Actor. [He received a Best Picture nomination as producer of 12 Angry Men (1957) in between the two]. His performance as Norman Thayer Jr. in On Golden Pond (1981) would win him the Oscar; however, he wasn't present at the ceremony and his daughter and co-star Jane Fonda accepted the award on his behalf. As of 2020, Fonda is the oldest winner of the Best Actor Oscar (he was 76 when he won). 
Sylvester Stallone got his first acting Oscar nomination when he starred as struggling small-time boxer Rocky Balboa in Rocky (1976) (which also gained him a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination as well). However, Peter Finch's electric performance in Network won through. Fast forward nearly forty years, and Stallone brought Rocky back to ask as mentor to Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) in Creed (2015), giving a fine performance which netted him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, which (frankly) he should have won [which went to Mark Rylance instead for Bridge Of Spies (2015)]. Whilst an Oscar still proves elusive, Stallone nevertheless has a rather elite claim to fame: as of 2020, he is one of only six actors (the others being Peter O'Toole, Paul Newman, Bing Crosby, Al Pacino and Cate Blanchett) who have been nominated for two Oscars for playing the same character in different films. 
The First Lady of the American Theatre was also an Oscar-winning actress, winning a Best Actress Oscar for one of her first film roles, The Lullaby [also known as The Sin Of Madelon Claudet] (1931). Despite a career which included Arrowsmith (1931), A Farewell To Arms (1932) and Anastasia (1956), it would be nearly four decades before Hayes received her second acting nomination, this time in the Best Supporting Actress category for playing elderly stowaway Ada Quonsett in star-studded disaster movie Airport (1970). At the 43rd Academy Awards in 1971, Hayes won (netting the film's only win from 10 nominations), becoming the first performer to win Oscars in lead and supporting categories. 
Palance got three Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations throughout his career: he was nominated for two years on the run [for noir thriller Sudden Fear (1952) and Western drama Shane (1953)] and then... nothing for 38 years. Until his performance as grizzled trail boss Curly Washburn in City Slickers (1991). Palance's nod for Best Supporting Actor would be the film's only Oscar nomination- and Palance won! His acceptance speech will go down in Oscars history as one of the most WTF moments when he proceeded to do a series of one-armed push-ups during the speech (which he claimed convinced studio insurance agents that he was well enough to work on the film). 
