However, the Oscars competition itself appears to hold little suspense, with clear favorites generally expected to win.

Joel and Ethan Coen, screenwriting winners for 1996's "Fargo," look to come away as the night's big winners for their crime story "No Country for Old Men," which has dominated at earlier film honors.

The Coens could make Oscar history if they sweep all four categories in which they are personally nominated: best picture as producers on the film, director, adapted screenplay and editing, for which they were nominated under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.

It would be the first time anyone has won four Oscars for the same film, and it would tie the record of four Oscars in a single year held by Walt Disney, a quadruple winner for 1953 as producer of three winning short films and a documentary for the 1953 awards.

No matter who wins, one key prediction from Academy Awards overseers already has come true: The show will go on.

It was a nail-biter for weeks as a Hollywood writers strike threatened to decimate the Oscars, with stars and filmmakers indicating they would not cross picket lines if the labor quarrel remained unsettled.

In the wake of the Golden Globes, whose celebrity bash was stripped down to a pitiful mid-January news conference because of the strike, Oscar organizers insisted their ceremony would go on as planned.

The 100-day strike ended less than two weeks before the Oscars, but it was enough time for the show's producers to pull together the big production viewers expect from the biggest night in show business.

That left a shorter span for writers to prepare the show, but host Jon Stewart was undaunted.

"For the business that I'm in, it's the Super Bowl," Stewart told The Associated Press. "It's the ultimate show business 'let's put on a show, we open in two weeks, people' and it's grand. There's a grand scale to it that you don't get to experience, at least I haven't, in any other aspect. It's live, it's that night, it's their night. There's so much to it that is exciting."

With the strike muting Hollywood's normally glossy awards season, Oscar planners figure there is pent-up demand for a big ceremony such as theirs.

"I think we're going to have a wonderful turnout because there haven't been awards shows," said Gil Cates, producer of the Oscar ceremony. "Not only our community is really excited about all of us getting together, but I think out there in the rest of the world, there is awards fever."

While "No Country" was considered an overwhelming front-runner, one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history is fresh in people's memories, when "Crash" won best picture two years ago over the heavily favored "Brokeback Mountain."

That surprise was preceded in the days leading up to the ceremony by buzz around Hollywood that "Brokeback Mountain" was losing steam and momentum was building for "Crash" among the 5,800 voters in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Fans of this season's other nominees _ the tragic romance "Atonement," the teen pregnancy comedy "Juno," the legal drama "Michael Clayton" and the oil saga "There Will Be Blood" _ may hold out hope of another underdog victory. But this time, there is no sense that support is waning for "No Country."

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