Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan are the front runners, going in to the Oscars with a total of 24 nominations between them. Each week going up to the Oscars, there will be a look at the major categories and offer some predictions.
Best Picture 1999
It's a race between two Elizabethan England stories: Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth and three dramas all taking place during World War II: Life is Beautiful, The Thin Red Line, Saving Private Ryan.
Although it's not as clear a front runner as once thought, the Academy's love for big historical epics, and especially ones displaying a level of skill that Steven Spielberg has, will propel Saving Private Ryan to victory as Best Picture of the Year.
Although if there is an upset, it will be Shakespeare in Love, which received a total of 13 nominations, putting it in a league with only a few films with that many nominations.
Thin Red Line, the other film about World War II, is too philosophical a film to win, and the other two simply don't have a chance to win. The Truman Show should be on this list, even if it were, it is predicted that Spielberg's powerful masterpiece Saving Private Ryan would win, and it will be a very deserving winner.
The acting categories are going to be a lot tougher to predict this year. This week, we'll look at the two leading acting categories.
Best Leading Actor Nominees 1999
Roberto Benigni, Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Nick Nolte, and Edward Norton.
Benigni can pretty much be counted out though … he has better chances elsewhere. Norton's nomination was quite a surprise, although well deserved, and he's too much of the dark horse to have a chance of winning. So this one is a three way horse race …
Tom Hanks has already won two Oscars back to back, this decade even, and yet he still has a great chance to win his third Best Actor Oscar. The only thing stopping him would be that his role was not AS distinctive as the roles that previously won him Oscars, such as a gay man dying of AIDS and the memorable Forrest Gump. But the performance was still a memorable one from Hanks, and he would certainly deserve the Oscar.
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