‘La La Land’ set to win...

“I think ( Stone) will win but if she doesn’t, it’s because she makes it look so easy and because you don’t see her putting on an accent, putting on a fake nose, all those things,” Stephen Galloway, editor-in- chief of weekly trade paper The Hollywood Reporter, told .

“People like to see the acting. You don’t with her. That is actually why she is so great.”

Stone also faces competition from Natalie Portman ( ), Ruth Negga ( and Meryl Streep, 67, who earned her record-breaking 20th nomination for

. Gosling is expected to lose out in the best actor category, however, to Casey Affleck (

) or Denzel Washington ( ), who are seen as neck-and-neck in the show’s closest race.

“I really don’t know which way best actor will go,” veteran film critic Anne Thompson, awards editor for movie blog , told .

“I keep changing my mind. And production design and costumes are also hard to call. If ‘La La Land’ wins both, it gets 10. If it wins one, it gets nine.”

Crews rolled out plastic sheeting on Wednesday to protect the red carpet and fan bleachers, with intermittent rain showers expected to hit Los Angeles on Sunday. —buoyed by a record seven Golden Globes in January—will vie for best picture with eight films including , family drama and , the coming- of-age tale of an African-American in Miami.