It’s ‘Sinners’ vs ‘One Battle’ as Oscars day arrives
Hollywood—After months of expensive campaigns, the Oscars finally arrive on Sunday, with all eyes on the race between “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” for best picture, Hollywood’s most coveted prize.
Ahead of the star-packed gala, pundits say the Leonardo DiCaprio-starring political thriller “One Battle” is neck-and-neck with Michael B. Jordan’s bluesy vampire horror “Sinners,” while several acting prizes are similarly impossible to call.
Either movie could “break multiple Oscar records,” Variety awards editor Clayton Davis told AFP.
But until “the final envelope is opened for best picture, we’re not going to know who’s going to win.”
The ceremony—live on ABC and Hulu from 4 p.m. in Los Angeles (2300 GMT)—will be hosted for a second year running by comedian Conan O’Brien, and will feature live musical performances from “KPop Demon Hunters” as well as “Sinners.”
With political tensions running high and war raging in the Middle East, Los Angeles police have tightened security in the streets of Hollywood.
Inside the theater, both the front-runner films have a chance of breaking the all-time Oscar wins record—shared at 11 between “Ben-Hur,” “Titanic” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.”
“Sinners,” the tale of gangster twins returning home to a supernatural and segregated Deep South in the 1930s, has already made Academy Awards history with its whopping 16 nominations.
Ryan Coogler, previously best known for “Black Panther,” could become the first ever Black person to win best director, in the 98 years of Oscars history.
But “Sinners” will have to surge past “One Battle,” this season’s front-runner, about a washed up, off-grid revolutionary whose teen daughter is being hunted by a white supremacist soldier in a time of immigration raids and political extremism.
Its director Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the greatest auteurs of contemporary US cinema, but has never won any of his 11 previous nominations for films including “There Will Be Blood” and “Boogie Nights.”
One Oscars voter told AFP they voted for Anderson “because of his body of work” but admitted the choice was “very tough.”
Tight races
While suspense about best picture doesn’t happen every year, what is truly unusual this time is the amount of uncertainty surrounding the acting prizes.
Timothee Chalamet had long appeared a lock for his pushy 1950s 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.
