La La Land leads the field at the Oscars with 14 nominations

The Hollywood awards season reaches its glittering climax at the Oscars on Sunday with La La Land , a starry-eyed love letter to the glamour of Old Hollywood, tipped for glory.

Millions of viewers around the world will tune in for Tinseltown’s biggest night, with Damien Chazelle’s romantic musical pinning its hopes on 14 nominations, tied with Titanic (1997) and All About Eve (1950) for the most ever.

“When you mention those movies, it makes my head spin even more than it’s spinning. I’m a little speechless,” Chazelle, 32, told trade magazine Variety when the nominations were announced in January.

With voting among the Academy’s 6,000-plus members closed since Tuesday, the frenzied and at times schmaltzy campaigning that perennially marks the awards merry-go-round can no longer affect the results.

Analysts are backing La La Land, which stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling as an aspiring actress and a struggling jazz musician who fall in love in Los Angeles, to win most of the awards for which it has been nominated. However, it is expected to fall short of the record 11 statuettes achieved by Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003).