Vote Early and Often in the Oscar Race

It’s only right that ”Chicago” dominate this year’s buffet of Academy Award nominations. And not just because of its size and strength heading into the competition. The next five weeks of campaigning and log-rolling leading up to the Big Bling-Bling on March 23 promises to be so competitive that, as in Chicago elections of decades past, dead people may be dragged in to vote.
You thought last year was crazy? Wait. Do you even remember last year’s Oscars? If not, you neither know nor care that at about this same time a year ago Russell Crowe and Sissy Spacek were mortal locks for the lead-acting Oscars, which ended up in the hands of Denzel Washington and Halle Berry.
Right now, this minute, none of the four acting categories has a clear favorite. Least of all at the best actor spot, with Jack Nicholson’s mopey retiree in ”About Schmidt” holding a slight edge over Daniel Day-Lewis’ flamboyant cutthroat in ”Gangs of New York” and Adrien Brody’s eponymous role in ”The Pianist” a possible spoiler. The best actress race is hardly a runaway, with five women of more or less the same generation jousting for attention. It may depend finally on which golden girl voters
are more anxious to bestow their love, Nicole Kidman for ”The Hours” or Renee Zellweger for ”Chicago.”
While it’s tough to pick a winner among lead and supporting acting categories, there are a few people here and there whom you could easily imagine losing. Of the top of my head, Ed Harris for ”The Hours,” Michael Caine for ”The Quiet American” and Salma Hayek for ”Frida” will have the hardest time getting to the podium to give acceptance speeches.
A lot will be determined by how well ”Chicago”–with its 13 nominations, bestowed Tuesday – does in the next couple of weeks in piling up the box-office receipts and raising its public profile. If by mid-March ”Chicago” withstands the week by week assault of drab first-weekend wonders to maintain, even exceed, its vigorous ticket-selling stride, it will have enough momentum to seal its destiny as the first musical since 1968’s ”Oliver!” to win the best picture Oscar. The force of its vapor trail, more than likely, will pull several of its players along with it toward the winner’s circle. It’s happened plenty of times before.
Whether ”Chicago” cleans up and eats everything on its plate or not, this year’s Academy Awards lineup serves as yet another signpost of Hollywood’s diminishing impact on its biggest annual party. Of the five best picture nominees, only ”The Hours” is affiliated with a major Hollywood studio, Paramount. And Miramax, the New York-based company that produced two other nominees, ”Chicago” and ”Gangs of New York,” is a distribution partner with Paramount on ”The Hours.”
All of which would seem to encourage those who believe that New York City should someday be Oscar’s true home. These same people, execs and pundits alike, mutter beneath the media radar that the movie industry is, at this point, closer to the country’s upper right corner than its lower left.
Depends, I guess, on what one means by ”movie” and ”industry.” The venerable Hollywood powers are still good to go on baking, packaging and distributing piping hot blockbusters each summer to rake in multi-millions from the multiplexes. And some of the more robust majors, such as Columbia (or what’s now known as Sony/Columbia), make big scores with the likes of ”Spider-Man” while they are still willing to toss the dice with risky boutique items such as ”Adaptation.”
But there’s now a fixed pattern to the movies’ annual sequence of seasons, in which profits dominate the discussion throughout the middle of the year while ”quality product” (as Dr. Evil would put it) is pushed to the foreground from the holidays through March Madness. Those who see the industry tilting more to New York might think the holiday season should be a year-round affair. But not as long as the business of America – and the movie business it came to master – remains business.