And the Oscar goes to...

We attempt that annual, useless practice of predicting the Oscar winners in key categories before the ceremony on Sunday night.

Best cinematography

This is an intriguing category with a three-way clash: the liquid, Steadycam wonder of Birdman; the formalist, elegant austerity of Ida; and the delightful, dollhouse supersymmetry of The Grand Budapest Hotel. I have my favourite, though I wouldn't mind any of them winning. If Emmanuel Lubezski actually gets it, it'll be a back-to-back glory after last year's Gravity.

Will Win: Emmanuel Lubezski (Birdman)

Should Win: Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski (Ida)

Best Foreign Language Film

A robust line-up, despite the absence of Saint Laurent (France) and Winter Sleep (Turkey). Leviathan, a gabby, heavy drama and Putin-bashing allegory, is the front-runner. Breathing down its neck is Ida, a Polish entry that tells the story of a young woman's spiritual and historical blossoming. Wild Tales from Argentina is a slickly maniacal, class-based revenge fantasy. Meanwhile Timbuktu, from Mauritania, is relevant and poetic (about the brutal hypocrisy of Islamic fundamentalists), though it's obviously too poetic for Hollywood taste.

Will Win: Ida

Should Win: Timbuktu

Best Supporting Actress

There is a burst of big-eyed honesty from the rehabbed daughter in Birdman, played by Emma Stone. And there is the aquamarine-haired Meryl Streep as the manipulating and forlorn witch in Into The Woods. But it's Patricia Arquette as the mother — a lost, failed, struggling, lost-again and forever struggling mother, which is what every mother is — who has moved us and will now move the voters.

Will Win: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood)

Should Win: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood)

Best Supporting Actor

Everyone thinks this one is a lock. J.K. Simmons, with that menacing dome of a head, has swept most prizes in the past few months from his role as a sadistic, psychologically abusive jazz teacher in Whiplash. But to me — as much as Simmons deserved the kudos — Edward Norton from Birdman is surprisingly impressive — funny, crazy, melancholic — as a Broadway actor whose life is a perpetual feat of offstage acting and onstage being.

Will Win: J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)

Should Win: Edward Norton (Birdman)

Best Actor

Eddie Redmayne is riding a big wave after his Golden Globes and Screen Actors' Guild wins. Watching him as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything, you can't fault the actor's commitment and technique, but then, winning from imitating a real person is frankly quite a bore. I don't think Birdman is a great movie, but I think Michael Keaton has given it a soul. The whole film is a reference to Keaton's career: he plays a washed-up, forgotten actor who's trying to make a comeback and redeem himself as an artist. This is the closest thing the man will ever get to the Oscar, and I think the fairy-tale-loving Hollywood will be kind to him.

Will Win: Michael Keaton (Birdman)

Should Win: Michael Keaton (Birdman)

Best Actress

This is no fun. Julianne Moore will win for playing a linguistics professor diagnosed with Alzheimer's in Still Alice. Moore has given us a master class, but my pick would be Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night, a Belgian drama about a factory worker who's facing the prospect of unemployment. On Cotillard's face, the follies of democracy and capitalism are laid bare.

Will Win: Julianne Moore (Still Alice)

Should Win: Marion Cotillard (Two Days One Night)

Best Adapted Screenplay

A close race, with The Imitation Game and Whiplash slightly up in the front. But hey, what about Inherent Vice, that neon-zonked acid trip into the tail-end of the hippie decade, adapted from a Thomas Pynchon novel (that alone merits an award) by Paul Thomas Anderson. The writing category is where the Oscars often honour independent filmmakers, and this year that envelope can reveal any name.

Will Win: Whiplash

Should Win: Inherent Vice

Best Original Screenplay

Birdman, Boyhood or The Grand Budapest Hotel? As mentioned above, the screenplay slot often goes to the "artist" (last year's winner is Spike Jonze from Her) rather than the hype-riders, so as much as I'm touched by Boyhood, I think the eccentric lollipop from Wes Anderson will get the nod.

Will Win: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Should Win: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Director

After years of startling versatility (the Before Sunrise, Sunset, Midnight trilogy, a zeitgeist teen comedy, a sci-fi animation, etc) Richard Linklater deserves the recognition of his peers for the 12-years-in-the-making Boyhood. The dark horse (it's not that dark in fact) is Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu from Birdman.

Will Win: Richard Linklater (Boyhood)

Should Win: Richard Linklater (Boyhood)