Awards season is upon us, and this weekend's grand finale, the Academy Awards, will bring to our TV sets weeping winners, awkward entrances and maybe a few surprises.
The big show promises some major changes to the standard plodding program that producers hope will shake things up enough to keep viewers awake past the first hour. Producers made the unconventional decision to put stage and screen actor front and center as host of the ceremony, when past shows have generally featured comedians and host-types in the role. Jackman's no stranger to playing MC, though, as he has hosted the Tony Awards.
The show may also keep us alert by mixing up the traditional order in which awards are presented, a move that has been rumored over the last few weeks. Hopefully showrunners learned an important lesson from the tragic mistake from several years ago, when they lined up the nominees on stage, forcing one winner and four losers to share the same bittersweet spotlight.
Regardless of the method and theatrics employed, the awards themselves will still be the focus of the evening. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher's interpretation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, leads the way in nominations with 13 nods. Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is next with 10, followed by the biopic Milk and Batman sequel The Dark Knight, which boast eight nominations each. Doubt, The Reader and Frost/Nixon each received five nods.
It seems that by now, most everyone has accepted that Heath Ledger is a shoe-in for Best Supporting Actor for his ultra-creepy portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight. Ledger has already posthumously won every award he has been nominated for, and it's unlikely that the Academy will want to be the group to break the trend.
Best Supporting Actress is a harder category to call: Kate Winslet won the Golden Globe for The Reader, but she is up for the same role as lead actress this time around. Penelope Cruz took home the BAFTA Award for supporting, a fairly good predictor, but Viola Davis in Doubt and Taraji Henson as the mother in Benjamin Button could give her a hard time.
The lead performance categories also have some close races. Though all the Lead Actor nominees would be perfectly wonderful choices, the real race at this point is between Mickey Rourke, who revived his life and career with The Wrestler, and Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to office in California. Rourke received the Globe, but Oscar doesn't have a history of rooting for the down-and-out underdog, so Penn could very well take this one.
The Best Actress race is even trickier: Kate Winslet received the Globe for lead but for Revolutionary Road, not The Reader, which got her the Oscar nod. She did win for the lead role in The Reader at BAFTA, though Meryl Streep took home the Screen Actors Guild statue for Doubt. And some Hollywood folk have said that Melissa Leo could beat out both of these acting heavyweights for her role in Frozen River. Call it a cop out if you want to, but this category is just too close to call.
This year, for the first time in five years, all of the Best Picture contenders are also up for Best Director. Not too surprising (in fact it seems strange that this doesn't occur more often), but that doesn't mean an automatic match for the two categories. Still, such an event seems likely in this case.
Danny Boyle seems to be the favorite for directing Slumdog Millionaire, and he did win the Golden Globe, the BAFTA award and the Directors Guild award. This unassuming indie flick shot out of nowhere to be the surprise hit of awards season. Slumdog also looks to be the favorite for Best Picture, as there is no clear second choice among the other four films (The Reader, Milk, Frost/Nixon and Benjamin Button).
With races as close as these, this year's Academy Awards ceremony is sure to - Oh, I'm being told to wrap it up. OK, um ... gosh, I'm so nervous! Um ... watch the 81st Annual Academy Awards this Sunday at 8:30 p.m. on ABC. OK, they're rushing me off now, sorry if I forgot anything, but ... thank you so, so much. This was truly an honor. Thank you.
