With Sinners and One Battle After Another neck-and-neck for Best Picture and several acting races far too close to call, this Sunday's Oscars gala is shaping up to be the most unpredictable in years.
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A Hollywood ceremony set to feature music from KPop Demon Hunters and Conan O'Brien as host will feature several nail-biting reveals, culminating in the announcement of the year's best film, which remains anyone's guess.
Until "the final envelope is opened for Best Picture, we're not going to know who's going to win," said Variety's awards columnist Clayton Davis.
"Both [One Battle After Another and Sinners] have a huge opportunity in order to break multiple Oscar records," he told AFP.
Sinners, a smash-hit vampire period horror film from director Ryan Coogler, has already made Academy Awards history with its whopping 16 nominations.
The blues-inflected race allegory has a chance to chase down the most Oscar wins by a single film, shared at 11 between Ben-Hur, Titanic, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Watch: The trailer for Sinners
Coogler, previously best known for Black Panther, could become the first-ever black filmmaker to win Best Director in 98 years of Oscars history.
"He's only the seventh ever nominated," noted Davis, who spoke to many Oscars voters and says "the love for Coogler is undeniable".
But the frontrunner of this awards season has long been One Battle After Another, a zany thriller about a retired revolutionary looking for his teen daughter.
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Set against a wild backdrop of radical violence, immigration raids, and white supremacists, it earned 13 nods and could also break the overall wins record.
Its director, Paul Thomas Anderson, is one of the greatest auteurs of 21st-century US cinema, but he has never won any of his 11 previous nominations for films including There Will Be Blood and Boog ie Nights.
Watch: The trailer for One Battle After Another
Although Sinners was the bigger commercial hit, the exciting race between two "popular movies that people will know at home" should be good for ratings, Davis predicted.
'Steamroller'
While suspense about Best Picture does not happen every year, what is truly unusual this time is the amount of uncertainty surrounding the acting prizes.
A year after narrowly losing Best Actor honours with his uncanny Bob Dylan portrayal in A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet had long appeared a lock for his pushy ping-pong player in Marty Supreme.
But a series of ill-advised comments, most recently dismissing ballet and opera as art forms that "no one cares about", have seen the 30-year-old golden boy's chances plummet.
Sinners star Michael B Jordan, who plays two roles as twin brothers, won the important Screen Actors Guild's Actor Award this month, just before the Oscars voting closed.
"This is a movie star performance that we don't get very often... he's really two steps away from the finish line," said Davis, who also does not rule out Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another) or Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon).
The supporting acting prizes are also up for grabs.
Sean Penn could win a third acting Oscar for his comic yet terrifying soldier in One Battle After Another.
But he is up against international arthouse favourite Stellan Skarsgård for Sentimental Value and veteran Delroy Lindo, earning his first Oscar nod at 73 for Sinners.
Supporting Actress could see a rare horror villain role rewarded for Amy Madigan in Weapons, or go to Teyana Taylor as a revolutionary in One Battle After Another or Wunmi Mosaku as a Hoodoo healer in Sinners.
The only sure thing appears to be Jessie Buckley, who plays William Shakespeare's wife in Hamnet.
Watch: Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal discuss Hamnet with RTÉ Entertainment's Alan Corr
"It's been the steamroller all season. That's the one thing you could take to the bank," said Davis.
KPop, Redford tributes
Best International Film is arguably the hardest to call of all, with Norwegian family drama Sentimental Value up against Brazil's surreal political thriller The Secret Agent.
Conan O'Brien returns to host the Oscars for a second year running, while Barbra Streisand is rumoured to be singing a tribute to her The Way We Were co-star Robert Redford, who died in September.
Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami, the singing voices behind KPop Demon Hunters' fictional girl group HUNTR/X, will perform the Netflix smash film's Oscar-nominated song Golden.
The 98th Academy Awards, hosted by Conan O'Brien, will be shown live on RTÉ One from 11:00pm on Sunday, 15 March, and the ceremony will also air on RTÉ2 on Monday evening from 9:30pm.
Source: AFP
