This time last year, as the film industry buzzed with stories of Titanic going well over budget and falling far behind schedule, James Cameron's epic disaster movie was being reviled and written off as an unmitigated disaster before anyone had seen it. However, since Titanic finally opened 12 weeks ago, it has been breaking box-office records all over the world and is the first film ever to take more than a billion dollars at the global box office.
The icing on the cake for James Cameron and his team will be winning the recognition of their peers - and a raft of Oscars - at the 70th Academy Awards ceremony which begins at 6 p.m. on Monday (2 a.m., Irish time) at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Going into the ceremony with 14 nominations, Titanic has equalled the all-time record set in 1950 by All About Eve. The last mountain for Cameron to climb is the record set by Ben-Hur in 1959 when it went home with 11 Oscars, the most any film has won.
James Cameron is on course to break that record, too, possibly winning in all 14 categories, but more likely to emerge with an even dozen Oscars, probably losing out for best actress where Kate Winslet faces fierce competition, and best make-up where Men In Black is tipped to have the edge.
It's a year of extremes at the Oscars, with the $3 million British picture, The Full Monty, pitted against the $200 million Titanic for best picture and best director. The acting nominees range in age from the 22-year-old Kate Winslet to the 87-year-old Gloria Stuart who play the same character at different ages in Titanic. Stuart, a veteran whose career was most active in the 1930s, is the oldest person ever nominated for an acting Oscar.
Traditionally, best supporting actress is one of the first categories announced at the Oscar ceremonies and should Stuart win that award, as I expect she will, it will cue the first standing ovation of the night and the beginning of the Titanic roll. Nevertheless, that category produced the biggest shock of the night last year when the sentimental favourite, Lauren Bacall, went home empty-handed and Juliette Binoche was declared the winner. Sentimental favourites abound among this year's acting nominees and Stuart stands a better chance of winning than either Peter Fonda or Burt Reynolds in their categories.
Best Picture
Titanic is joined on the short-list by two critical favourites, L.A. Confidential and Good Will Hunting, which have nine nominations each. The other two nominees are rank outsiders - As Good As It Gets, directed by James L. Brooks, whose Terms Of Endearment won him three Oscars in 1983, and the underdog, The Full Monty. In the highly unlikely event that Titanic does not win, Good Will Hunting stands the best chance, but Titanic has taken on such momentum that it cannot lose.
Best Director
All of the nominees here are up for best director for the first time. Four of the best picture contenders figure on the short-list - James Cameron for Titanic, Curtis Hanson for L.A. Confidential, Gus Van Sant for Good Will Hunting and Peter Cattaneo for The Full Monty. Cattaneo received a nomination in the live-action short film category in 1990 for Dear Rosie.
With James L. Brooks failing to take the fifth place, the surprise nominee here is the gifted Cairo-born, Toronto-based Atom Egoyan, a naturalised Canadian, for The Sweet Hereafter. A Canadian will be named best director by the Academy for the first time this year, but it will not be Atom Egoyan. It will be James Cameron.
Best Actor
The 1969 cultural phenomenon Easy Rider marked the movie breakthrough for Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, and both of them are on the best actor short-list this year. Peter Fonda is in for Ulee's Gold, in which he plays a reclusive Florida beekeeper. Fonda's father, Henry, won one Oscar, and his sister, Jane, won two; Peter's only previous nomination was in the best original screenplay category for Easy Rider.
Securing his 11th nomination, for As Good As It Gets, Jack Nicholson is now the second most nominated performer in Oscar history, behind Katharine Hepburn, who received 12 (and won four, the most for any performer). Nicholson already has won two Oscars (best actor for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and best supporting actor for Terms Of Endearment), as has Dustin Hoffman (best actor for both Kramer Vs Kramer and Rain Man), who is back in contention again for Barry Levinson's Wag The Dog in which he plays a Hollywood producer modelled on the famously flamboyant Robert Evans.
Robert Duvall, an Oscar winner for Tender Mercies in 1983, is back on the shortlist for playing an evangelist in The Apostle, which he also wrote, produced, directed and partly financed. The fifth nominee is by far the youngest, the 27-year-old Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting.
No category is more difficult to predict this year. Jack Nicholson is the runaway favourite, with Peter Fonda, who won the Golden Globe in January, the sentimental favourite, and while Nicholson may well shade it, I will stick my neck out and put my money on Robert Duvall.
Best Actress
This is the first time since 1985 that all five best actor nominees are American, but only one American has been nominated for best actress this year - Helen Hunt, best known for the long-running TV sitcom, Mad About You, who impressively seizes the opportunity to stretch her range in As Good As It Gets. The other four nominees are British - Helena Bonham Carter (The Wings Of The Dove), Kate Winslet (Titanic), Judi Dench (Mrs Brown), and Julie Christie (Afterglow). The early front-runner in the critics' awards, Bonham Carter, lost ground to Dench when the latter won the Golden Globe in January for her performance as Queen Victoria. Writing in the Guardian, Mark Lawson interpreted that as a symbolic award and that "Judi Dench may have been one of the more surprising beneficiaries of the Diana effect".
The last time only one American was on the best actress short-list was in 1971, and the American won - Jane Fonda for Klute. However, in 1965 Elizabeth Hartman was the only American on the short-list and Julie Christie won. Can Christie do it again this year? Probably not. Judi Dench is the most likely of the British actresses to win, but my prediction is that Helen Hunt will do it.
Best Supporting Actress
Gloria Stuart, from Titanic, is on the short-list with Golden Globe winner Kim Basinger (L.A. Confidential), Joan Cusack (In & Out), Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights) and Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting). Cusack, the only former nominee here, and Driver are the outsiders. Moore deserves the award, and while she and Basinger surely will figure strongly in the voting, Gloria Stuart looks unbeatable.
Best Supporting Actor
The big surprise here is the omission of Rupert Everett for My Best Friend's Wedding. The five who make it include two actors on the comeback trail - Burt Reynolds for Boogie Nights and Robert Forster (Jackie Brown). The other three places are taken by former chatshow host Greg Kinnear for As Good As It Gets, Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting, and former winner Anthony Hopkins, for Amistad. Burt Reynolds is the firm favourite here, but I would hazard a bet on Robin Williams to take the Oscar.
Screenplay Awards
The Writers' Guild of America gave its original screenplay award this month to James L. Brooks and Mark Andrus for As Good As It Gets, but it should be beaten to the Oscar by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for their Good Will Hunting screenplay. The other nominees here are Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, Simon Beaufoy's The Full Monty and Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry. It's Woody's 13th screen-writing nomination, putting him ahead of former record-holder Billy Wilder, who received 12.
From its nine nominations, L.A. Confidential is most likely to take the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, for Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland's adaptation of James Ellroy's novel. The other nominees are Hossein Amini (The Wings Of The Dove), Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), Paul Attanassio (Donnie Brasco), and Hilary Henkin and David Mamet (Wag The Dog).
Music Awards
John Williams gets his 36th original dramatic score nomination for Amistad, but he's got some way to go before matching record-holder Alfred Newman's haul of 45. Jerry Goldsmith gets his 16th nomination, for L.A. Confidential. Philip Glass is on the short-list for Kundun, as is Danny Elfman for Good Will Hunting. However, the runaway winner will be James Horner's heavily Celtic-influenced score for Titanic, which will be played over and over during the ceremony as the movie racks up its Oscars.
Danny Elfman crops up again in best original musical or comedy score, this time for Good Will Hunting. He deserves to win in a lacklustre field that includes Hans Zimmer (As Good As It Gets), Anne Dudley (The Full Monty), James Newton Howard (My Best Friend's Wedding) and the team of Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens and David Newman (Anastasia). Weren't all the best songs in My Best Friend's Wedding oldies by Burt Bacharach? And does anybody remember any original music from The Full Monty?
Animated cartoon features are represented, as ever, in best original song - by Go The Distance from Hercules and Journey To The Past from Anastasia. Rising singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, recently signed by DreamWorks, is in with Miss Misery from Good Will Hunting, as is Diane Warren's How Do I Live from Con Air, a hit for both Tricia Yearwood and LeAnn Rimes. All four songs will be annihilated on Oscar night when Celine Dion trills the Titanic theme, My Heart Will Go On.
In Other Categories
The best foreign-language film category regularly produces mystifying results. I've only seen one of the nominees, the commendable Brazilian political drama, Four Days In September. There was good word on the German Beyond Silence at the Dublin Film Festival this month, and positive critical reaction in the US to the Dutch drama, Character. The other nominees are The Thief from Russia and Secrets Of The Heart from Spain. I'll guess Four Days In September because the very Oscars-savvy Miramax is releasing it in the US.
Spike Lee is my tip for the documentary feature award for his highly regarded Four Little Girls, which is endorsed in the trade paper adverts by a quote from Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King. I've seen none of the nominees for the animated and documentary shorts, so I'll pass on them.
With Men In Black my tip to pip Titanic for make-up, all the remaining feature awards should go to James Cameron's crew - cinematography (Russell Carpenter), film editing (Conrad Buff, Richard A. Harris and Cameron himself), art direction (Peter Lamont and Michael Ford), costume design (Deborah L. Scott) and sound, sound effects editing and visual effects.
The MC for the evening will be the incomparable Billy Crystal.
Barry Norman introduces live coverage of the Oscars ceremony on BBC 2, beginning at 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning.
Planet Hollywood in Dublin is holding an Oscars party from 11.30 p.m. on Monday to 6 a.m. on Tuesday. The Oscars ceremony will be relayed live on TV. Food and refreshments will be served. Tickets: £20 each. Tel: 01- 478 7827.