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Hollywood is holding its breath ahead of the Oscars on Sunday, with dark comedy "Birdman" and coming-of-age drama "Boyhood" neck-and-neck in the awards season home stretch. [File photo]

Campaigning can no longer have any impact on the results, as the 6,124 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finished casting their ballots on Tuesday.

While the best picture race is on a knife-edge, several of the other key categories are seen as much easier to predict.

Veteran star Moore is almost universally expected to win best actress for playing a linguistics professor suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's Disease in "Still Alice."

Arquette is the favorite for best supporting actress as the single mother raising two kids in "Boyhood," while J.K. Simmons is widely expected to win best supporting actor honors for jazz drama "Whiplash."

The best actor race is still seen as up for grabs -- a two-man contest between Redmayne -- as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything" -- and "Birdman" star Michael Keaton.

For best director, the frontrunners are Linklater and Mexico's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the creative force behind "Birdman."

This has led to speculation that the best picture and best director prizes could be shared, as they were last year when Mexican Alfonso Cuaron won best director for "Gravity," while the best picture Oscar went to "12 Years A Slave."

"That's a possibility, that Inarritu wins best director and 'Boyhood' best picture, or vice versa," said Vincent Brook, a lecturer at the UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television.

A star-studded cast of presenters will hand out the prizes at Sunday's show, including Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Kidman, Eddie Murphy, Liam Neeson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey.

Harris will have the tough task of following last year's widely-praised mistress of ceremonies, Ellen DeGeneres.

But the 41-year-old best known for TV show "How I Met Your Mother" should be up to it, having won four Emmys for hosting Broadway's Tonys awards.

The show, which starts at 5:30 pm (0130 GMT Monday), will be preceded by the traditional red carpet parade, featuring a bevy of stars kitted out in their formal finest.

Security will be tight: on Thursday, a bomb scare briefly closed down the nearby Hollywood and Highland intersection, at the end of a stretch of Hollywood Boulevard that was sealed off for the week for the show.

One unwelcome guest could be rain -- forecasts say there is a 60 percent chance of what is a rare LA phenomenon. Last year, a last-minute freak storm forced organizers to scramble to make sure it didn't rain on the party.

They will be hoping the clouds hold off for as long as possible on Sunday.

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