Few Surprises For Pinnacle Of Awards Season

It's practically an annual tradition to declare "the Brits are coming!" when the Academy Awards nominations are announced, but with so much chatter ahead of the announcement it's fair to say most people saw us a mile off.

It feels like a lifetime ago that The Imitation Game opened the London Film Festival (it was only October) and we've been expecting Benedict Cumberbatch's performance as WWll code breaker Alan Turing to get an Oscar nod ever since.

And just as predicted he's been nominated for Best Actor , up against Eddie Redmayne's much-lauded take on Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, as well as Michael Keaton and Steve Carrell.

It really comes to something when an actor as mainstream as Bradley Cooper is the one creating a sense of the unexpected in the Best Actor category.

Now begins the next wave of speculation - can one of the British genius-playing actors win? Well already Michael Keaton's role in Birdman is being talked up as a likely winner, so if he scoops the prize we can all say we knew he had it in the bag months ago.

The problem with being the pinnacle of the awards season is by the time the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs are done and dusted there are very few surprises left.

Then again the Academy is never really one for shocks - while art-house-style films like Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel are just avant garde enough to prompt some serious chin stroking, the likes of Boyhood or The Imitation Game feel somewhat safe, the latter being oddly coy about Alan Turing's sexuality.

It's Richard Linklater's coming of age drama Boyhood which is expected to take Best Picture, impressive in the 12 years it took to make and touching in its everyday sentimentality.

But the very thing that critics are celebrating it for - its depiction of "normality" - is the thing that makes it feel like a very cosy front runner.

The surprises we did get aren't particularly welcome. Bound to raise the odd eyebrow is the complete absence of non-white actors in any of the major acting categories, which in a year when David Oyelowo delivered an electrifying portrayal of Martin Luther King seems a senseless oversight.

Indeed the Academy neglected to make history by nominating its first ever black female director Ava DuVernay for her sterling work on Selma, although it does stand a chance for Best Picture.

At least it’s given observers the opportunity to cry “snub”, now the most over used word during awards season (yes, even snubbing has become predictable).

So not everyone who deserves a nomination gets one but in the end the Academy can't nominate everyone.

When they do opt for a shock result it rarely fills movie hacks with glee, either - critics were outraged in 2006 when Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain was defeated by the melodramatic Crash in the Best Picture category.

Perhaps expecting the weird and the wonderful at the Oscars is unrealistic while expressing disappointment that the Best Picture is something your grandmother might like seems churlish.

But it’s still the greatest show on earth, trouncing all other award shows in terms of both credibility and glamour.

And while the debate may not be ferocious or the race wide open, every one of those nominees will still be holding their breaths when that envelope is opened on 22 February.