Oscars / Chicken Dinner / 19 February 2009 / Leave a comment

If you're considering a bet on the Sunday night's Oscars awards, you might want to read these punting pointers first. Chicken Dinner supply the essential info...

Best Picture
Slumdog Millionaire is the [1.14] favourite on Betfair to win Best Picture at the Oscars but the film's BAFTA success doesn't necessarily bode well. The BAFTAs Best Film has only been recognised by the Academy once in the last seven years. Even more worryingly, the Globes and the BAFTAs have chosen the same winner in three of the last four years only for an alternative to be crowned at the Oscars. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [9.0] received 13 nominations and seven of the previous ten films to have received that amount or more have won Best Picture.


Best Director
Danny Boyle is a strong frontrunner at [1.15] but his BAFTA win may have damaged his chances because Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, 2005) is the only man to have completed a Globes/BAFTAs/Oscars treble in the last fourteen years. British success in this category has been fleeting, with Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, 1996) and Sam Mendes (American Beauty, 1999) the only winners in the last 25 years. A Best Picture/Best Director double has been completed in fifteen of the last twenty years so it could be double or bust for the Slumdog Millionaire director.


Best Actor
Mickey Rourke's position as favourite [1.58] for the Best Actor gong was strengthened by his BAFTA win. In each of the last four years an actor has completed a Golden Globes (Drama or Musical/Comedy), BAFTAs and Oscars treble - Jamie Foxx, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Forest Whitaker and Daniel Day-Lewis. What makes the recent period of consensus more shocking is that prior to that, only two actors in 26 years had won all three Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, 1982) and Geoffrey Rush (Shine, 1996). One notable disadvantage for Rourke is that five of the last six treble winners have portrayed real people.


Best Actress
BAFTAs success bodes well for Kate Winslet [1.49] because the last three winners at the London-based event have triumphed in Hollywood. Another good omen for the Brit is that in every even year this decade (counting this as 2008) the Golden Globes' Best Actress (Drama) has won at the Oscars. The development that threatens Winslet's chances the most is that two Holocaust experts have condemned The Reader and most notably the way her character is sympathetically portrayed. However, it's unlikely that second favourite Meryl Streep [4.9] will win as she has missed out with ten of her 11 previous nominations.


Best Supporting Actor
Consensus is fairly rare in this category and Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men, 2007) is the only man to have won Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Oscars in the last six years. However, Heath Ledger, the overwhelming [1.06] favourite, remains almost certain to add to that tally. When Peter Finch became the only actor in Academy Award history to win a gong posthumously (Network, 1976), his performance as an insane TV reporter was also recognised at both the Globes and the BAFTAs.


Best Supporting Actress
The absence of Golden Globe winner Kate Winslet from the list of Oscar nominees has made this the most unpredictable of the six leading markets but Penelope Cruz's BAFTAs success has strengthened her position as frontrunner [1.6]. In six of the last seven years the BAFTA winner has gone on to triumph at the Academy Awards, making it a far more accurate indicator than the Globes (four in eight). Marisa Tomei [9.0] has already won various critics awards (Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Las Vegas), but none of those four bodies matched the Academy's choice of Best Supporting Actress last year.