Of course there have been scandals and surprises: that's almost the point of the Oscars.

Foremost among them this year is a surprise that is scandalous because, depressingly, it is not all that surprising: the fact that despite a biopic of Martin Luther King getting a best-picture nomination there is no black actor in contention, let alone a black director or cinematographer.

David Oyelowo, who is stupendous in Selma as the great civil rights leader, director Ava DuVernay, and Bradford Young, her black cinematographer (it would have been a first), just aren't there. It's a giant sin of omission.

That said, we are left with a competition that is remarkably open. The two films with nine nominations each – Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel – are not necessarily the ones expected to be the biggest winners. And the next most-nominated film, with eight nods, is The Imitation Game which, by my calculations, may not win any of them.

American Sniper, with six, may also come away with not much more than a pat on the back for sound – and fury, given its battleground setting. Boyhood, with six nominations, may do better. It's nothing like last year's three-horse race.

Even so, it is striking what else has been left out.

For a start, they are able to nominate 10 contenders for best picture, but apparently it was just an eight-out-of-10 kind of year. Sorry to you, A Most Wanted Man! Too bad, Mr Turner! Eat your heart out, Nightcrawler (and be grateful for that script nom). Foxcatcher, Wild … nope, forget it.

But when you look at the list of best actor contenders and think for even a few moments about who else, quite apart from Oyelowo, isn't there – Ralph Fiennes for The Grand Budapest Hotel, Joaquin Phoenix for Inherent Vice, Jake Gyllenhaal for Nightcrawler, Timothy Spall for Mr Turner and even Philip Seymour Hoffman, the greatest actor of his generation, for A Most Wanted Man – you realise what a strong field of men's stories there has been this year.

As is reflected in the script nominations. Every one of them written by a white male. Isn't that just the biggest surprise?

So roll up, roll up for the greatest show on Earth. Get the knowledge before you settle in for the night. As the ringmaster said, there's one born every minute. You may as well be ahead of the pack.

Best picture

The nominees: American Sniper; Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance); Boyhood; The Grand Budapest Hotel; The Imitation Game; Selma; The Theory of Everything; Whiplash

So! Will Richard Linklater's heartfelt, unpretentious and yet formally daring Boyhood – a film shot over 12 years, a couple of weeks at a time – get yet another best-in-show after its wins in Berlin, the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs? Or will one of the brace of biopics about damaged British scientists (The Imitation Game, about code-breaker Alan Turing; The Theory of Everything, about brainiac theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking) get the kind of love that tends to shower on British period flicks (apart from Mr Turner, that is)?

My guess is not. A king with a stammer is one thing; a disturbingly over-educated person with a peculiar personality (Turing) or severe affliction (Hawking) is another.

These films are not comfortable; neither is Whiplash, the film about an aspiring jazz drummer, which is full of shouting and thundering snares. The comfort factor will also play against American Sniper and Selma. The former is all about a Southern patriot who committed his shooting skills to picking off swarthy enemies of America and send them all to hay-ell. As luck would have it, Martin Luther King was a man of colour, albeit one closer to home, who was also destined to be picked off by a patriotic Southern sniper. Do we want to join those dots? No, we don't.

Which is why Selma, which should win, will most likely lose to the thrillingly cinematic but ultimately insubstantial Birdman. Oscar, understandably enough, has always loved movies about actors. Here is a film entirely set in a theatre, about a washed-up star of comic superhero movies trying to go legit. It has the hitherto washed-up Michael Keaton in the lead role, giving the performance of his life. See what they did there? There is just one issue here: Birdman made such an explosive impact when it first showed in Venice and Telluride last September that it may have run out of persuasive energy. In which case we've come full circle, right back to the slower-burning Boyhood. 

Best director

The nominees: Alejandro G. Inarritu (Birdman);  Richard Linklater (Boyhood); Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher); Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel); Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game)

This could go to Inarritu, Linklater or Anderson depending on how the best-pic cards fall; it could even go to the dark horse from Norway to ensure The Imitation Game – most popular film in Toronto, let's remember – gets its due.

Actually, Miller probably deserves to win on the grounds that his film has been nominated in this category and the best-actor category but not for best film, which defies logic. My guess, however, is that Linklater will get this one in recognition of a body of work that spans the spread of American filmmaking from Before Sunrise to School of Rock. Plus I like him. Go Rick!

Best documentary feature

The nominees: Citizenfour; Finding Vivian Maier; Last Days in Vietnam; The Salt of the Earth; Virunga

It is difficult to know how this one will play, not only because I (and no doubt many others) have not been able to see two of the contenders, but because of the unquantifiable pull and push of opinion around Edward Snowden, the subject of bookies' favourite Citizenfour. There will be those who think an American traitor who leaked classified information should not be given any more of the precious oxygen of publicity; there will be others who will want to do exactly that.

If the opposing views even out, the award may swing round to Wim Wenders for The Salt of the Earth, his admiring account of the life and work of Brazilian photo-journalist and world citizen Sebastiao Salgado, co-directed with the photographer's son Juliano Ribeiro. Oscar expert Ann Thompson describes it as "four hanky", I guess because Salgado dies. I think I fell asleep.

Best lead actor

The nominees: Steve Carell (Foxcatcher); Bradley Cooper (American Sniper); Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game); Michael Keaton (Birdman); Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)

This is Michael Keaton's to lose. Everyone is so chuffed to see that it's possible to make a grand comeback at 63 (which just happens to be the average age of the Academy's voters) that the fact he's a perfect fit for the tormented Riggan is just a bonus. Steve Carell is wearing a false nose as John du Pont, which always earns a few points, but Du Pont's icy reserve doesn't afford the kind of histrionic turns voters tend to rate as good acting. Eddie Redmayne, who crumples so grandly into Hawking's wheelchair and keeps our sympathetic attention even when he can no longer speak, is Keaton's only real threat.

Best supporting actor

The nominees: Robert Duvall (The Judge); Ethan Hawke (Boyhood); Edward Norton (Birdman); Mark Ruffalo (Foxcatcher); J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)

It's probably going to be J.K. Simmons, who won the corresponding Golden Globe, all over again; all that shoutiness acts as a showcase for any actor but particularly for one caught in a secondary role. Admittedly, there's a lot of love out there for 84-year-old Robert Duvall; Ed Norton's zingy unpleasantness as a self-absorbed actor in Birdman is bracing; Mark Ruffalo, always good, has a winning warmth as Channing Tatum's brother in Foxcatcher and Ethan Hawke's wayward Dad, who moves in and out of the light over the 12 years of Boyhood, is so real you can almost touch him. Whatever, Simmons has already got his jaws clamped round that statuette. Don't expect him to drop it.

Best actress 

The nominees: Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night); Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything); Julianne Moore (Still Alice); Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl); Reese Witherspoon (Wild)

Ah, the foreign factor. Goodness knows how, out of the vast swathe of films that come from somewhere other than America (where is that, exactly?) every year, they pinpoint just one for Hollywood's consideration. This year it's Marion Cotillard, whose subtle, riveting portrayal of a fragile woman trying to win her colleagues' support to let her keep her job is truly great. However, nothing will beat Julianne Moore, whose imminent win is as much a reward for her exemplary career as for her portrait of a woman with early onset Alzheimer's. It's bad luck, too, for Rosamund Pike, who appears to have lost several other people's body weight to play the mad, bad and extremely dangerous Amy Dunne in Gone Girl: at the very least, she deserves a compensatory cake.

Best supporting actress

The nominees: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood); Laura Dern (Wild); Keira Knightley (The Imitation Game); Emma Stone (Birdman); Meryl Streep (Into the Woods)

Patricia Arquette never quite hit her stride as a younger actor, despite starring roles in some almost-there arthouse indies such as Flirting with Disaster. In interviews she came across as ditzy, an impression given some weight by the fact she up and married Nicolas Cage. But as Mom over the 12 years of Boyhood, moving through marriages as her waist thickens, she has an accessible humanity that makes us wonder what we missed about her in the past. Emma Stone, whose brittle cool as Riggan's daughter in Birdman has won plaudits, will get more chances. This is Patricia's year.

Adapted screenplay

The nominees: American Sniper (Jason Hall); The Imitation Game (Graham Moore); Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson); The Theory of Everything (Anthony McCarten); Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)

It seems inconceivable that a film by Clint Eastwood with six nominations could come out of this shindig with nothing, so let's say – just for argument's sake – that Jason Hall's attempt to put shades of grey into American Sniper's Chris Kyle's partisan life should win this one. That feels entirely arbitrary, however. Paul Thomas Anderson's Herculean effort to turn the jokes and vast cast of characters in Thomas Pynchon's novel Inherent Vice into visual jokes is arguably the real achievement here, but PTA seems to be out of favour in La La Land. It could go any which way.

Original screenplay

The nominees: Birdman (Alejandro G. Inarritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr, and Armando Bo); Boyhood (Richard Linklater); Foxcatcher (E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman); The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness); Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy)

This really has to go to Anderson; Grand Budapest's loopy plot, which zigzags up and down the fictitious Alp where the hotel was once home to every jaded old duchess in middle Europe, is simply dazzling. Its ostensible lack of seriousness may, however, have it sidelined in favour of Birdman. Or even Nightcrawler, a film that has not made as much impact on the awards season as was once expected but that may be in with a chance here; its suggestion that tabloid true-crime television represents the final death throes of civilisation has a satisfyingly apocalyptic sweep. 

Best animated feature

The nominees: Big Hero 6; The Boxtrolls; How to Train Your Dragon 2; Song of the Sea; The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Some terrible, inexorable Hollywood logic is hurling the little gold fellow straight at the How to Train Your Dragon sequel. This is what happens to Dreamworks animations, delivered as they are with a reliably upbeat mood and plenty of swooping angles to keep your child watching through every sugar high the candy counter can deliver. Gold dudes are that much less likely to go to eccentricities like The Boxtrolls, with its dotty cardboard-box characters, its hand-drawn quality and subtext about the lives of the marginalised. Or to Irish picture-book fantasies about selkies, to wit Song of the Sea. But they're there on the list, which I suppose is something. And The Lego Movie isn't, which is something else.

Best foreign language film of the year

The nominees: Ida (Poland); Leviathan (Russia); Tangerines (Estonia); Timbuktu (Mauritania); Wild Tales (Argentina)

It is genuinely exciting to see Cannes break-out Timbuktu, Abderrahmane Sissako's film about living under ad-hoc jihadi rule, competing in this creme-de-la-creme category. Actually, with the exception of Leviathan – director Andrey Zvyagintsev has an established series of runs on the board – none of these films feels like a usual suspect.

Wild Tales, a film that begins with a plane crashing into a genteel elderly couple taking afternoon tea, just gets crazier as it slithers from one scrambled story of urban mayhem to the next. Ida is the winner here, however. Universally feted, Pawel Pawlikowski's austere account of a novice nun who discovers she is actually Jewish is a minor masterpiece.

Everything Else

What is dead certain about The Grand Budapest Hotel is that it is going to clean up in the costume and production design areas. It also has a good claim on make-up, given that it gave us a grotesque preview of what Tilda Swinton will look like at 80, although Foxcatcher may sneak away with that gong for best make-up on the strength of Carell's large and seamlessly applied nose.

American Sniper will have to walk away with something else; Eastwood's excellent sound engineers deserve something for making all those automatic rifles crack and the bullets whistle. Interstellar, the shonky big sci-fi movie about driving through black holes that very quickly went off the boil when the trolls started picking apart its shaky science, could also get some recognition for its sound design, although it is more of a shoo-in for visual effects.

Finally, the cinematography award will almost certainly go to Emmanuel Lubezki for Birdman, which was shot as a series of very long takes that were then artfully assembled to appear seamless.