Which leaves Robert Altman and Ron Howard. Altman has the Bacall problem: He pissed off a lot of industry people in his very long career, and that haunts him even now. In a fair world, Altman would win. But this is Hollywood, a more vicious version of high school. The voters will compromise with Howard: Even though he's the class president and football quarterback, he's still liked by them because he's bald.

But if Howard doesn't win, then the membership is sending him the same message they sent Steven Spielberg for years: Surprise us with a departure from your usual saccharine directing style. Howard has yet to make his "Schindler's List."

Best actress

According to one of her minions, Renée Zellweger has been AWOL during this Oscar campaign because she convinced herself she couldn't win. Too bad, because the voters really like her. Nicole Kidman could have milked her "this was a really awful year for me personally" status but didn't, so Academy tears have dried for her. Besides, they resent the fact she's now loaded thanks to Tom Cruise divorcing her.

More Academy members have told me they've voted for Judi Dench in "Iris" than anyone else in this category for the same tasteless Alzheimer's joke I made before. Could signal a trend. But then again, Dench won an Oscar too recently.

That leaves Sissy Spacek vs. Halle Berry. Both want it, both campaigned like heck for it and both will be appropriately humble. But Spacek is too much of a loner: She lives with her family in a place that's not Hollywood or New York and hasn't been around to suck up to Academy members.

Berry is considered too new, too beautiful and too white (yes, that matters to the Academy if you're a black actress). That car accident didn't help, nor did the announcement that she's the next Bond girl. Still, she'd have been the shoo-in if she'd only dressed up in the movie like a man. But she's paid so much homage to Oscar these past weeks that it's impossible for the academy to ignore her. She wins.

Best actor

Every year, it seems, the academy honors Sean Penn with a nomination, and every year he doesn't win. This is a case where they love his work but hate him. Few voters sat all the way through "Ali," so Will Smith never had a prayer. And Tom Wilkinson is still unknown to the Academy, so he's out of contention as well.

The membership already has called several strikes against Russell Crowe: He won last year, he behaved badly at the British Academy Awards (pushing around people, though apologizing for it), and he dumped that darling Meg Ryan -- though perhaps after her noisy role in "Kate and Leopold," they forgive him now.

But Crowe is the new Brando, warts and all, and the voters can't deny talent.

That, too, is true of Denzel Washington, who is Crowe's only competition. He may mouth off about race much too often for the Academy's comfort, but this year's Oscar nominations show it's cool to be black. So Denzel has an edge on Crowe there. But Crowe will pull it out in the end because he's got the ultimate Oscar sucker punch: He plays -- sniff, sniff -- a man with a terrible infirmity. Unbeatable.

Best picture

"In the Bedroom" went into Oscar's early contest with the usual Miramax hoopla. But now voters have had time to see the movie and decide it didn't live up to the hype. "Gosford Park" also suffered from viewing; it wasn't quite as much fun as everyone in the Academy had been led to believe.

"Lord of the Rings" was not as familiar to voters as it was to moviegoers; the advanced age of the Academy's membership meant they did not have Tolkien on their must-reading lists as teens. That Baz Luhrmann was aced out of a best director's nomination has actually helped "Moulin Rouge" win voter sympathy in these final weeks of Oscar campaigning. But the critical response to the movie was mixed, and the Academy is wary of such nonuniformity.

That wasn't the case with "A Beautiful Mind," which received lots of rave reviews -- though naysayers complained that it was an untruthful biopic.

Still, more times than not, one movie sweeps the Oscars, and that's a likely possibility for "A Beautiful Mind." If it doesn't, then the voters really were swayed by all the rival studio backbiting against "Mind" in the media and on the Internet.

But I still don't think the choice will be the epic "Lord of the Rings" or the flashy "Moulin Rouge." The Academy is a sap for simple stories that say something about the human spirit. So "Mind" wins.

Recent Stories