Ross King: You’d be gaga to bet against La La Land’s Oscar chances

IT’S Hollywood’s biggest night of the year and all about the shiny wee guy.

I mean the wee statue – not me!

It’s the Oscars and I’ve steamed my Ted Baker tux, dusted down the microphone and even brushed my teeth. Well, it IS a special occasion!

The 2017 Academy Awards will take place tonight at the Dolby Theatre here in La La Land. And what better way to start with the movie named after the nickname for this city?

La La Land, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, has been a smash hit which proved musicals are back in fashion.

It’s had 14 nods, a tie with Titanic and All About Eve for the most nominations for a single film. It’s a good film and you heard about it here first when I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival last year.

Oddly, it’ll be hard to top the news about that record amount of nominations, though – it almost seems like it can only disappoint from here.

But not if it can win some of the top gongs like Best Director, Best Movie and the top actor awards.

Will it land the Best Movie award? Well, Hollywood does love a film about LA, acting and art.

If La La Land wins, then the Best Movie over the past six years will have gone to a movie about Hollywood or acting four times.

The director, Damien Chazelle is walking off with the Oscar – they may as well give it to him now.

And Emma Stone is almost a certainty to land Best Actress for her role as the rising star in the film too – never mind La La, you’d be gaga to bet on someone else to bag the statuette.

As for Best Actor her co-star Ryan Gosling probably won’t be winning that one. Don’t get me wrong, he was fantastic and will go on to win an Oscar one day.

But in a seriously strong field I think it’s a toss-up between Denzel Washington, for Fences, and Casey Affleck, for Manchester By The Sea.

I’ve chatted with them both in recent weeks and both have played down their chances. But both put in absolutely powerhouse performances.

Denzel was telling me last week that it was Fences co-star Viola Davis’ turn to win an Oscar – and if you can’t trust big Denzel, who can you trust?

And one final prediction — in the year Donald Trump entered the White House, the biggest certainty of the night?

Loads of political speeches!