Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club
This time next week the 2014 Oscars will be over for another year and we will know which performances and movies have scooped the biggest prize in film.
Apart from the Best Actress category - which will go to Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine - this year's Oscars are wide open with some major battles set to take place.
We take a look at those who are set to go head to head for the major gongs... starting with Best Actor.
While the Best Actor category is loaded with talent, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Dern and Christian Bale are also nominated; this is a two horse race between Matthew McConaughey and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
- Matthew McConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club
McConaughey has sensationally turned his career around in recent years, going from rom-com pin-up to major Hollywood heavyweight.
All of his hard work has been rewarded with his first Oscar nomination for his central performance in Dallas Buyers Club.
Dallas Buyers Club is a hard-hitting issues movie, which looked at HIV/AIDS and the stigma of the disease during the eighties in America.
McConaughey takes on the role of Ron Woodroof, to defied doctors to live longer than the thirty days predicted after he was diagnosed with AIDS.
Woodroof battles tirelessly to get drugs that HIV/AIDS sufferers require into the U.S. to give them a chance of life.
There is no doubt that this is the performance of McConaughey's career, as he brings heart, soul, and real steel to this character.
McConaughey has already won the Golden Globe, Gotham Independent Film Award, Screen Actors Guild and a whole host of other gongs for his terrific performance.
He is the frontrunner for the Oscar - which would be a first win from a first nomination. And if Chiwetel Ejiofor wasn't also nominated, he would be the hands down favourite to win.
- Chiwetel Ejiofor - 12 Years A Slave
Chiwetel Ejiofor is an actor who has already enjoyed a successful, film TV and theatre career over the years. However, his career has been taken to a whole other level with 12 Years A Slave.
Ejiofor takes on the role of Solomon Northup as director Steve McQueen brings his slavery memoir to the big screen.
The movie follows Northup - a free man living in New York - who is tricked and sold into slavery.
Much like McConaughey, this is the performance of Ejiofor's acting career so far, and this is also his first Oscar nomination.
Ejiofor truly disappears inside of this character, as he shows his strength, courage and his unshakable will to survive.
Ejiofor has won a whole host of awards for his performance, including Bafta, AACTA International Award, and London Film Critics Circle Award - to name just a few.
We all know how much the Academy loves a biopic performance and true story, and that really is what makes the McConaughey/Ejiofor battle so hard to call.
They both deliver powerful, moving, and true performances, that it is difficult to know which way the Academy is going to vote.
While I think that McConaughey will come out the victor, I would love to see Ejiofor triumph for what is truly a wonderful performance and a stunning film.
The Oscar winners will be revealed Sunday 2nd March.
Tagged in Matthew McConaughey Chiwetel Ejiofor Oscars