Eddie Redmayne backs Leonardo DiCaprio to win best actor Oscar

Kate Winslet stands a strong chance of taking home best supporting actress after winning in the category both at the Golden Globes and the Baftas.

Chris Rock hosts the show which airs live on ABC at 8:30pm (ET).

Many people will be watching the Oscars this year for a variety of reasons. Though there were no black winners that year, almost 20 percent of presenters and performers at the awards ceremony were black.

That’s why it’s a good thing that the comedian resisted calls from some to join the Oscar boycott. That’s despite more interesting fare such as Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight and Adam McKay’s The Big Short also being among contenders for Best Film.

The Revenant leads the pack with 12 nominations, while Mad Max: Fury Road is right behind with 10 nods.

The 88th Academy Awards will be broadcast later today at 5:30 p.m. Pacific.

Alicia Vikander is hoping to follow up her SAG Award victory for supporting actress with an Oscar win for her supporting role in “The Danish Girl”.

Rock has refrained from weighing in on the controversy on social media but took to Twitter on Friday to post a cryptic image of a television with no signal, alongside the message: “See you Sunday…” “The Academy can only nominate quality work that is made, so the onus still has to be on Hollywood to put those films out there”.

As Associated Press reporter Jake Coyle pointed out in a recent story, if the film industry really wants to make strides in the area of diversity, “it doesn’t have to look far for inspiration: Just turn on the TV”. Spielberg, rightly an eternal favourite at the Oscars, brings in a sort of allure.

Only twice has a director won back-to-back Oscars – John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley in the early 1940s and Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve, a decade later. Despite his being nominated for several different performances since then at other prestigious award shows, DiCaprio didn’t come under the Academy’s radar until 2005 when he was nominated for Best Actor as Howard Hughes in The Aviator. Lenny Abrahamson’s Room is this year’s example.

Oscar victor Eddie Redmayne has backed his rival Leonardo DiCaprio to take home this year’s best actor prize.

It’s as if they never went away.

How the controversy will affect ratings for ABC is also one of the night’s big questions. Nominations reflect that money-minded attitude and little else.