Greatest Aussie Oscar night ever beckons

Mad Max: Fury Road's crew, who battled for more than a decade to make the film, may turn the Oscars into the greatest night in Australian film history.

George Miller, his wife and fellow Oscar nominee Margaret Sixel and 11 other Australian members of their Mad Max: Fury Road crew are in for a daunting sight.

A 200-metre red carpet journey will lie ahead of them when they step out of their limousines in Hollywood on Monday (AEDT).

It will begin in Highland Ave and proceed down an iconic piece of Hollywood Boulevard.

After running a gauntlet of photographers and reporters and working up a sweat in forecast unseasonable 26C heat, the Aussie posse will enter the Dolby Theatre, enjoy a cold glass of champagne or beer and take their seats.

If experts and bookmakers are correct, the 88th Academy Awards will be one of the great moments - perhaps greatest - in Australian film history.

Mad Max: Fury Road is expected to be showered with Oscars.

A conservative prediction is 10 Australians will walk out of the Dolby Theatre at the end of the ceremony with Oscars.

If so, it will be well deserved.

The Oscar red-carpet walk might be daunting, but it's nothing like the seemingly never-ending, 15-year journey of regular disappointment and desert hardship Miller and his team endured trying to make Mad Max: Fury Road.

"It was a movie you couldn't kill with a stick," Miller told AAP in an interview.

The fourth chapter in the Mad Max franchise was scheduled to be shot in 2001 with original star Mel Gibson again in the lead, but when the September 11 terror attacks hit the US it was delayed.

Miller was then contracted to make the Oscar-winning animated feature Happy Feet, a four-year commitment that pushed back the Fury Road shoot.

When Happy Feet wrapped rains soaked the desert locations outside Broken Hill creating beautiful, but unsuitable, wildflower landscapes for Miller's post-apocalyptic action film.

The rise of the Australian dollar against the greenback also made shooting it in the Australian outback expensive, forcing the filmmaker to relocate to the arid, western African nation of Namibia.

"You should talk to my wife and accountant," production designer Colin Gibson, who spent countless hours prepping the off-and-on project since the start, joked.

Ironically, it is Miller, the mastermind and icon of Australian film and TV who has been nominated for four other Oscars in previous years (winning best animated feature for Happy Feet in 2007) who will likely be left empty-handed at this year's Academy Awards.

Miller is nominated for directing Mad Max: Fury Road and along with longtime producing partner Doug Mitchell, he'll collect if the barnstorming desert chase film wins best picture.

But, Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Inarritu, who won best picture, best direction and original screenplay for Birdman last year, is frontrunner again for best picture and direction for The Revenant.

Gibson, nominated with Australian set decorator Lisa Thompson, are favourites for the production design Oscar while Sixel is odds on to win the editing category.

The other Australian Mad Max: Fury Road crew members favourites for Oscar wins are: sound mixer Ben Osmo; sound editor David White; make-up and hairstylists Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin; and visual effects wizards Andrew Jackson and Dan Oliver.

John Seale, the 73-year-old Australian cinematographer who stepped in when another great Aussie lensman, Dean Semler, could not shoot Fury Road in Namibia is second favourite for the cinematography Oscar behind The Revenant's Emmanuel Lubezki, who also won last year for Birdman.

Another Australian who is no stranger to the Oscars, seven-time nominee and two-time winner Cate Blanchett, is expected to lose out for her performance in Carol to runaway favourite, Room's Brie Larson.

The Oscar ceremony is schedule to begin at 12.30pm Monday (AEDT).

AUSTRALIA'S OSCAR NOMINATIONS

Best Picture: George Miller and Doug Mitchell (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Best Director: George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett (Carol)

Editor: Margaret Sixel (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Cinematography: John Seale (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Production Design: Colin Gibson and Lisa Thompson (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Sound Mixing: Ben Osmo (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Sound Editing: David White (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Makeup and Hairstyling: Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Visual Effects: Andrew Jackson and Dan Oliver (Mad Max: Fury Road)


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Source: AAP



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