The big Oscars runners & riders
VIOLA Davis insists that she won’t have a big celebration if she clinches an Oscar. She is 1/50 favourite to take home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Fences. But Viola said: “It’s not my style to bask in it too much. I’m good with it.” Fans around the world have been wowed by her performance as put-upon Rose Maxson opposite Denzel Washington. She first played the role on stage years ago and was nervous to return to it for the film. Viola said: “It was absolutely terrifying because usually when you do a movie or a television show you have to sustain the performance for maybe 10 seconds but when you have a 33-page scene you have to sustain a performance for probably a 20-minute take. “That takes skill and effort that takes reminding your muscles. “But then you have to revisit a character and wake up to it in a different way.” That really is Ryan Gosling tickling the ivories in La La Land.
The 36-year-old had months of piano lessons to prepare for the role of jazz musician Seb in the Oscar favourite.
“When Ryan came in and showed us what he could do on the piano – which, by his own admission, was not very much – I had a team for him to fit into,” said music director Marius De Vries.
“They worked two hours a day for four months. It shouldn’t be possible to cram the learning of a lifetime into four months but somehow they did it. Ryan’s very quick on the uptake.
“What you see on the screen is 100% Ryan’s hands and body and performance.
“We had a hand double as insurance, but that poor hand double sat in his trailer all day because he wasn’t called upon once.” Gruesome Hacksaw Ridge was supposed to be a kids’ film.
It took producer Bill Mechanic 15 years to bring the true story of pacifist WWII hero Desmond Doss to the big screen.
One of the big stumbling blocks was the fact that faith-based production company Walden Media held the rights to Doss’ story – and they were determined the film be made to a US PG-13 certificate.
The breakthrough came when Mechanic and director Mel Gibson decided to break with the studio and fund it themselves.
To cut costs for their adult version, they used Gibson’s nationality to get a tax break from the Australian government.
The horrific Battle of Okinawa was shot at a farm near Sydney. To hide the landscape, they dug a huge ditch, surrounded it with fake fog and used real explosives instead of relying on pricey CGI. ANDY LEA “It was thrilling to have the physical things happening around us,” said actor Andrew Garfield. Naomie Harris did three days’ work on Moonlight. “I was supposed to shoot, I think, over three weeks,” said the Brit, who is Oscar-nominated for her role as a crack addict single mum in the US drama.
“But they couldn’t get my visa sorted, so it ended up being condensed into just three days.
“We shot the whole thing completely out of sequence, so I was going from older to younger, middle age, all over the place.
“It was never meant to be like that.” The Jungle Book was shot inside a warehouse in Los Angeles.
When he landed the plum role of Mowgli in the Disney remake, little Neel Sethi probably imagined an exotic shoot in the wilds of India.
Instead, he found himself indoors while technicians dangled plastic animals and pieces of greenery in front of him.
The computer wizards who turned this into a lush jungle packed with talking animals fully deserve their Best Special Effects nomination. Jeff Bridges based his Hell Or High Water character on a real Texas Ranger. The Big Lebowski actor modelled Marcus Hamilton on Joaquin Jackson, who wrote his memoir One Ranger in 2005. He died last year, just before the film’s release. But Jackson was on set while Bridges shot his scenes, using the real lawman’s walk and mannerisms to bring his character alive. “Getting Joaquin’s stamp of approval was the most meaningful thing to me,” said Bridges. Tonight’s odds from bookies William Hill 1/6 La La Land 11/2 Moonlight 10/1 Hidden Figures 25/1 Manchester By The Sea 66/1 Lion 100/1 Arrival 100/1 Fences 100/1 Hacksaw Ridge 100/1 Hell Or High Water 4/6 Casey Affleck 6/5 Denzel Washington 14/1 Ryan Gosling 40/1 Andrew Garfield 100/1 Viggo Mortensen 1/6 Emma Stone 5/1 Natalie Portman 10/1 Isabelle Huppert 40/1 Ruth Negga 50/1 Meryl Streep 1/7 Mahershala Ali 7/1 Dev Patel 16/1 Jeff Bridges 20/1 Lucas Hedges 20/1 Michael Shannon 1/50 Viola Davis 14/1 Michelle Williams 20/1 Naomie Harris 40/1 Nicole Kidman 80/1 Octavia Spencer 1/20 Damien Chazelle 10/1 Barry Jenkins 14/1 Kenneth Lonergan 40/1 Mel Gibson 66/1 Denis Villeneuve