1. Directors making history
The Academy Award for best direction has usually been content to play classy second fiddle to the acting categories. This year, however, it looks set to make headlines. If Alfonso Cuarón wins for Gravity, he becomes the first Latino film-maker to ever take the prize. If Steve McQueen triumphs for 12 Years a Slave, he will be the first black director to ever win an Oscar (John Singleton was nominated in 1992; Lee Daniels in 2010). Cuarón is the favourite; McQueen close behind. The other contenders have front-row seats on the sidelines of history.
2. The death of the auteur
Once upon a time, the best film and director Oscars arrived in lockstep, reinforcing the view that the director was dominant and the movie an extension of his (or in one case her) genius. But last year’s event split the spoils between Ang Lee (for Life of Pi) and Argo (whose director, Ben Affleck, had not even been nominated), while the same thing could happen this year as 12 Years attempts to crash Gravity’s party. The monopoly has been broken and the centre cannot hold. Great pictures, it transpires, are not the work of one lone auteur.
3. Who’s smelling of horse?
Upon being nominated for this year’s Academy Awards, each contender qualified for an official Oscar goody-bag worth an estimated $80,000. The bag contains luxury holiday vouchers, a home-spa system, a “vaginal rejuvenation” treatment called the O-shot (the perfect Mother’s Day gift) and a tube of “horse shampoo”. We’re as yet unsure whether this last item is a cleaning product for your horse or a shampoo that leaves the nominee smelling like a sweating, incontinent thoroughbred that’s just run in the Derby. Wrinkled noses and the sound of gagging may clear up the mystery.
4. Whither (or wither) American Hustle?
Good news for American Hustle: David O Russell’s rollicking 70s-set crime caper is the joint frontrunner at this year’s Oscars, tied with Gravity on a whopping 10 nominations. Bad news for American Hustle: the odds are against it and the pundits don’t care. The film stands a chance in the supporting actress and original screenplay categories, but elsewhere its challenge appears to have faded. Whispers suggest that American Hustle will be this year’s Lincoln, which parlayed 12 nominations into two actual awards; the runaway favourite that flattered to deceive.
5. The raves from the grave
The in-memoriam section rolls in midway through the Oscar ceremony, bidding fond farewell to the fallen stars of Hollywood. The montage is tasteful, heartfelt and at times rather moving. But it is also accompanied, rather alarmingly, by the swell and ebb of audience applause. This risks spinning the whole affair the afterlife’s Pop Idol, with the winners selected by clap-o-meter. Some celebrities are roared to the heavens, while others are seen off to a stony near silence. We’re tipping Philip Seymour Hoffman to win this year’s fallen star Oscar.
6. Berlusconi shout out?
The Great Beauty paints an acid, elegant portrait of the damned demi-monde of modern-day Rome. It’s the heavy favourite to win the best foreign film Oscar, having already triumphed at the Baftas and the Globes. And yet this biting satire of Berlusconi-era excess was bankrolled in part by Berlusconi’s own Medusa Films production house. Is it too much to expect a word of thanks to the wily old rascal who made the whole thing possible?
7. The J-Law monopoly
Last year she won the Oscar for her role in David O Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook. This year she is tipped to repeat the feat for her role in David O Russell’s American Hustle. Everyone, allegedly, loves Jennifer Lawrence. She’s set fair to become the first winner of the best supporting actress prize in back-to-back years and - at the age of 23 - the youngest two-time victor in Academy history.
8. The Woody Allen factor
If there’s an elephant in the living room at this year’s Oscars, it’s surely the rumbling controversy over what Woody Allen did or did not do in a Connecticut attic back in 1992. Allen’s ex-partner and his adopted daughter says one thing, the film-maker says another, and media speculation has played as a kind of cacophonous accompaniment to Blue Jasmine’s Oscar campaign. Hitherto the film’s star, Cate Blanchett, has largely remained above the fray. But look for her to confront the issue head on if (as seems likely) she wins the best actress prize on Sunday night.
9. The world outside
Is anybody out there? Does anyone care? Critics claim that the Academy Awards have grown cosy and antiquated, an exercise in celebrity log-rolling, utterly irrelevant to the general public on the other side of the velvet rope. Its mainstream appeal has been further limited by a crop of nominated pictures (Nebraska, Her, The Dallas Buyers Club) that have made only a middling impression at the US box office. The 2013 TV ratings saw a 19% bump on the year before, but 40m viewers is still a far cry from that halcyon night of 1998, when 57.3m tuned in to see Titanic sweep the board.
10. The losing nominees
Drama students take note. If you require a masterclass in acting prowess, keep your eyes on the hapless nominees when the envelope is opened and another name is read out. This is what makes them great. Here, surely, is the skill that got them shortlisted in the first place. They’re dying inside, their dreams are in ruins. Their considering sacking their agents and kicking their cats, but will they show us they’re hurting? Heaven forbid. In recent decades only Samuel L Jackson has allowed the mask to slip. “Shit,” he murmured, as rival Martin Landau was called to the stage.
