On Sunday, the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles will be home to the 85th Academy Awards.

This year, the races among the six major categories are all over the board. Some are clear-cut, and some are tossups.

The race for Best Supporting Actress is a virtual lock and deservingly so. Anne Hathaway is the likely favorite for her performance in “Les Miserables.” While the movie itself was a tad overrated, Hathaway’s performance was undoubtedly the best part.

The only foreseeable barriers in Hathaway’s path toward the Oscar, are Sally Field from “Lincoln” and Amy Adams from “The Master.” Both offered strong performances, but the momentum is on Hathaway’s side. She won the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award and BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Award for the same category. The award is as good as hers.

Daniel Day-Lewis winning the Best Actor award for “Lincoln” is another certainty. His performance was so good that the audience was not watching Day-Lewis, but rather the resurrection of Abraham Lincoln himself.

It is a rough year to be one of the other nominees. Bradley Cooper delivered a fantastic performance as a bipolar man in ”Silver Linings Playbook.” It seems even better when you consider the source, but it isn’t going to beat Lincoln reincarnate.

Denzel Washington’s performance in “Flight” was one of the only good parts of that movie, the other being the plane crash, but it will not be enough.

Honestly, Day-Lewis’ name could have been printed on the trophy as soon as he was nominated.

The final lock of the major categories is for Best Achievement in Directing. Steven Spielberg for “Lincoln” is the leading favorite. Surprisingly, he has only won the award twice, despite being nominated six times before.

His only wins came for “Schindler’s List” in 1993 and “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998.

His major competition comes from “Life of Pi” director Ang Lee, who took home the award in 2006 for “Brokeback Mountain” and was nominated in 2000 for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

The other nominees do not stand much of a chance. David O. Russell of “Silver Linings Playbook” was nominated in 2011 for “The Fighter,” but “Playbook” is a safe movie for directing, so he likely will not win.

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” director Benh Zeitlin and “Amour” director Michael Haneke are first-time nominees and outside shots at best. These three should just be happy they got nominated.

The biggest story of the directing category is who’s not there. No nominations for Ben Affleck of “Argo,” Quentin Tarantino of “Django Unchained” and Kathryn Bigelow of “Zero Dark Thirty,” all of which deserved a nod, Affleck more so than the rest.

He likely will find comfort in the many other awards he won this year, winning the BAFTA Award, Critics Choice Award, Directors Guild Award and Golden Globe. No love from the Academy, though. It is easily the snub of the year.

The three other categories are all toss-ups. Best Supporting Actor looks to be the tightest race of the night, since all five nominees have won before.

Philip Seymour Hoffman from “The Master” is a previous Best Actor winner (“Capote”), but his film grossed the least of the five. Alan Arkin was fantastic in “Argo,” but his role was pretty small.

That leaves Robert De Niro in “Silver Linings Playbook,” Tommy Lee Jones in “Lincoln” and Christoph Waltz in “Django Unchained.” All three gave strong performances, but Waltz should win. His role is engaging and the most vital to the overall plot of his film.

He won the same award in 2010 for another Tarantino film, “Inglorious Basterds”and deserves to win it again.

Best Actress is a two-way race. It all comes down to Jessica Chastain for “Zero Dark Thirty” and Jennifer Lawrence for “Silver Linings Playbook.”

Lawrence should be the winner here, though it is very close. Lawrence’s performance is simply showier. Her role as a neurotic widow who falls for Cooper gives her more opportunity to show off than Chastain in her search for bin Laden. She also has a previous nomination under her belt for “Winter’s Bone” in 2011.

That leaves Sunday’s final award, Best Picture. There are nine nominees this year —though they can nominate up to 10. The nominees are “Amour,” “Argo,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Django Unchained,” “Les Miserables,” “Life of Pi,” “Lincoln,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”

The unofficial rule of thumb for this category is that any film whose director was not nominated for Best Director, will not win. This year could break that rule —something that has not happened since “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1989.

The favorites here are “Argo” and “Lincoln.” Coming into Sunday, everything has been coming up “Argo.” It won the BAFTA Award, the Critics Choice Award and the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture-Drama.

“Argo” should continue its run on Sunday. As good as “Lincoln” was, “Argo” was better. It would be interesting to hear an Affleck acceptance speech since he was skipped over in the directing category. He will likely be classy about it, but on the off chance he throws the film’s most quotable line at the Academy, it will be worth watching.

The Oscars air Sunday on ABC at 4 p.m. PST.