Glitz, glamour and fingers crossed for Oscar night

LAST year, the musical returned to Academy Awards grace with best picture winner Chicago. Now, the long-overlooked fantasy genre is positioned for Oscar favour.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is shaping up as the dominant picture at the 76th annual awards tomorrow. With clear front-runners in most major categories, the outcome looks predictable, though a surprise or two is possible.

The Return of the King is steam-rolling its way to the top prize of Best Film with momentum not seen since 1997's Titanic.

The culmination of Peter Jackson's prodigious adaptation of JRR Tolkien's fantasy trilogy, Return of the King, is the darling of critics and audiences and has cleaned up at previous Hollywood honours, including the Golden Globes and awards from the guilds representing directors, actors and producers.

Partly on the strength of acting nominations for Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Marcia Gay Harden, the sombre vengeance drama Mystic River may be the strongest best picture rival.

But it's a distant second at best. With Penn and Robbins considered front-runners for lead and supporting actor, Oscar voters may feel they have done right by Mystic River in casting ballots for the performers, leaving the best picture field to Return of the King.

While these awards are all about movies so too are they about fashion. There will be no surprise in the glamour, colour and more than a hint of cleavage that will hit the Oscars' red carpet as Hollywood sparkle returns to the ceremony, after being dulled last year by the outbreak of war in Iraq.

Acutely aware that a photo of their clothes on the world's most famous runway is worth far more than any advertising campaign, the world's top designers are still working frantically to persuade some of Tinseltown's hottest stars to show off their creations at the Oscars.

And to celebrate the first Oscars in three years that looks set to be untarnished by world events the 2002 show was subdued by the September 11 terror attacks the stars are planning to dazzle their fans.

"In the last couple of years, the stars were mourning. This is the year that people start to feel happy again," said US designer Eletra Casadei, who copies gowns worn by stars and makes affordable versions for the masses. "Colour, colour and more colour, and glamour," she said of the fashion at this year's show, after the drastically cut back 2003 red carpet ceremony at which most stars wore black and put away their diamonds and jewellery so to not look frivolous in the heat of war. But this year, black goes back into the closet, and pizzazz comes out to play, Casadei says.

Singer Alison Krauss, nominated for a track from Cold Mountain, will sport the most expensively clad feet on the carpet thanks to a $2m pair of jewel-encrusted Stuart Weitzman sandals. So while it's a stroll in the park for Lord of The Rings, Cold Mountain sprints ahead in the fashion stakes.