The 90th anniversary of the Academy Awards is now upon us, a landmark event. And so to mark this milestone moment, it is time to distribute some super-Oscars, some mega-Oscars, some all-time Oscar-of-Oscars, handing out to movie legends a few of those gold statuettes the size of lamp-posts that are dotted about the Academy’s legendary red carpet.

So in the spirit of list-making nerdiness and fantasy-league indulgence, I now present my personal Oscar-of-Oscars nomination list, made up of the greatest winners in the awards’ history.

The six main categories – best picture, best director and best actor (male and female, lead and supporting) – are filled by people and films that were in the first instance triumphant and so go on to be super-nominees in this final uber-ceremony of the mind. Try to imagine all these contenders in some Valhalla-like version of Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Capra rubbing shoulders with Daniel Day-Lewis and Meryl Streep.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be revealing my choice of the greatest of the greats in each category, explaining why I feel they deserve to claim their Oscar-of-Oscars. We’ll also be opening the voting to you, the reader: select your choice from the nominees below and we’ll announce the results alongside my own picks.

This is not an exercise that can please everyone. By keeping to the winners of the time, it risks perpetuating the original wrongs: no best director win for Hitchcock, no best picture for Citizen Kane. Also, there’s an entry in the best picture list that some might feel should be disqualified on moral grounds.

It is a much-repeated maxim of the late Christopher Hitchens that “it is impossible to have a nourishing conversation about last year’s Oscar results”, and of course the Oscars are not cinema’s be-all and end-all. But an awareness of history adds pleasure to everything: even the Oscars, an institution that sometimes appears to exist only in an amnesiac present. And to quote one of my super-nominees, the actor and cinephile Tilda Swinton: “There is no such thing as an old film.”

Join us every Wednesday as Peter reveals his all-time Oscar winners – and the result of the readers’ vote. It all kicks off next week with the prize for the greatest-ever best director, and concludes on Academy Awards week the best-ever best picture