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ACADEMY AWARDS: Looking for a Knockout

Directors Scorsese and Eastwood duke it out in battle of cinematic heavyweights

By CAROL CLING
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Most years, the annual Academy Awards chase resembles a thoroughbred horse race.

This year, however, it's a heavyweight championship bout -- between the ultimate Hollywood insider and the eternal outsider.

Yet, curiouser and curiouser, the contenders seem to be fighting from each other's corners.

Martin Scorsese, regarded for decades (and rightly so) as one of America's best filmmakers, generally makes projects of a deeply personal, barely profitable (if that) nature.

Yet here he is at the helm of the nomination leader, "The Aviator," an old-style Hollywood crowd-pleaser if ever there were one.

In the opposite corner, it's insider Clint Eastwood, who has metamorphosed in a remarkable half-century Hollywood career from TV hunk to movie megastar to genre director to artful auteur.

Unlike Scorsese, who has never won an Oscar, Eastwood captured two as director and producer of 1992's instant-classic Western, "Unforgiven." This time he's up with the boxing drama "Million Dollar Baby."

And while this year's Oscar fight night includes a host of intriguing undercards, it's the Eastwood-Scorsese showdown -- in the best picture and director categories -- that promises to be the main event.

So, after consulting my trusty crystal ball, here's a round-by-round tipsheet to the night's top categories, in which I fearlessly predict who will win -- and tearfully confess who I'm rooting for. (And seldom the twain shall meet.)

The envelopes, please ...


Best picture

Prediction: "Million Dollar Baby"

Pick: "Million Dollar Baby" or "Sideways"

If you go by the rules, this is "The Aviator's" Oscar to lose. After all, the nomination leader almost always wins -- and "The Aviator" has 11 versus seven for "Million Dollar Baby." Besides, Oscar voters these days generally opt for rousing spectacle rather than spare, intimate drama.

Yet Oscar history is littered with the bones of movies about movies (from "Sunset Boulevard" to "Bugsy") that never made it into the winner's circle. And I'm betting "The Aviator" will be another.

Despite Scorsese's vivid re-creation of golden-age Hollywood, "The Aviator" shares something with other Scorsese movies that have missed out on the brass ring (or, more precisely, the gold statuette). It's a little short on a key component "Million Dollar Baby" has in abundance: heart. Its characters may not be buck-the-system giants like "The Aviator's" Howard Hughes, yet, like Hughes, they know all about chasing dreams -- not for money or power or prestige, but because they don't know how to live any other way.

As for the rest of the field, "Finding Neverland" and "Ray" can count themselves lucky that they made the final five. (Don't believe me? Check out this year's Terry Awards contingent for some worthier alternatives.)

And while I'll be cheering heartily if "Million Dollar Baby" captures the night's heavyweight crown, here's a toast to "Sideways" and what might have been. Too funny, too rueful -- and too painfully true -- to pass Oscar's nobility test, its deep and sparkling complexity isn't quite the stuff Oscars are made of, at least not when more obvious alternatives exist.

But nobody hopes I'm wrong more than I do.


Best actor

Prediction: Jamie Foxx, "Ray"

Pick: Johnny Depp, "Finding Neverland"

If there's such a thing as a lock, Jamie Foxx is it. If he doesn't win for his uncanny incarnation of Ray Charles, Brother Ray himself may storm the Oscar ceremony and demand a recount.

Besides, this hardly seems a fair contest -- not without Paul Giamatti from "Sideways," who's leading this year's exemplary Terry Awards contingent.

All the same, you could make a case for almost any of the other nominees. There's Eastwood's grizzled, grudging loner rediscovering something (and, more importantly, someone) to live for in "Million Dollar Baby." Don Cheadle's minutely detailed, heroically restrained, portrayal of a good man who becomes a great one in "Hotel Rwanda." For me, however, Johnny Depp's "Finding Neverland" portrayal of "Peter Pan" playwright J.M. Barrie demonstrates Depp's subtle, supple imagination with gentle but undeniable power.

It has taken far too long for Depp and Cheadle to find themselves on Oscar's radar. Now that they are, they'll have other chances. (Eastwood should get his turn elsewhere this night.) Foxx, in the role of a lifetime and a performance that lives up to it, won't need another chance.


Best actress

Prediction: Hilary Swank, "Million Dollar Baby"

Pick: Kate Winslet, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"

It's deja vu all over again, with Hilary Swank of "Million Dollar Baby" and Annette Bening of "Being Julia" battling for top honors as they did in 1999, when Swank won for "Boys Don't Cry" and Bening lost despite her powerhouse work in that year's best picture winner, "American Beauty."

Unless Oscar voters feel unduly guilty (which I doubt), expect a Swank repeat. Bening's dazzling, to be sure, but in a featherweight backstage comedy relatively few have seen, while the equally impressive Swank has "Million Dollar Baby's" power on her side. It's the only nomination in this category from a best picture contender -- and a chance for Oscar voters to honor "Million Dollar Baby" without having to worry about choosing between it and "The Aviator."

If Swank and Bening split the vote, "Vera Drake's" homespun, heartfelt Imelda Staunton could sneak in for a worthy win. Graceful Catalina Sandino Moreno of "Maria Full of Grace," meanwhile, gets the "lucky to be nominated" nod.

And thus we bid a fond farewell to the prospects for Kate Winslet of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," who dances through her role's comedic and dramatic minefields with quicksilver ease. Then again, this is Winslet's fourth nomination -- and she doesn't turn 30 until October. She'll be back.


Best supporting actor

Prediction: Morgan Freeman, "Million Dollar Baby"

Pick: Thomas Haden Church, "Sideways," or Morgan Freeman, "Million Dollar Baby"

Here's one category where the payback factor doesn't run counter to the Academy Awards' supposed goal of honoring artistic achievement.

That's because Freeman -- a four-time nominee for standout work in movies from "The Shawshank Redemption" to "Driving Miss Daisy" -- delivers a pitch-perfect performance, full of world-weary warmth and quiet strength, in "Million Dollar Baby." The movie wouldn't be as much of a knockout without him -- and I'm betting Oscar voters know it.

If there's anyone who can edge him out, it probably won't be "The Aviator's" Alan Alda (nicely cast against type as a smilingly corrupt senator) or Clive Owen, ably combining rage and regret in "Closer." And everybody knows Jamie Foxx is poised to win the best actor Oscar for "Ray," so why bother honoring his subtly intense work as under-the-gun cabbie in "Collateral"?

That leaves "Sideways' " hilariously dim Church, whose character's bruised, almost used-up bravado delivers uproarious comedy and arrested-development insight in equal measure. In any other year, he'd be an obvious winner. This year, however, Freeman should take this round.


Best supporting actress

Prediction: Virginia Madsen, "Sideways"

Pick: Laura Linney, "Kinsey," or Virginia Madsen, "Sideways"

This may be one of the night's most intriguing categories; at least three nominees have a genuine shot.

If it's an "Aviator" night, the momentum could carry Cate Blanchett (playing another great Kate, Katharine Hepburn) to victory. She's the heart of the movie and a previous nominee many thought should have won in 1998 for "Elizabeth."

Natalie Portman, as the one character in "Closer" with a vestige of emotional honesty, also is the heart of a rather heartless movie -- and was even more winning as an offbeat charmer in "Garden State." Given Oscar's long-standing love affair with enchanting youngsters, this is generally a likely scenario for victory.

But if there's one thing Oscar loves more than a blossoming young actress coming to full flower, it's a comeback story. And Virginia Madsen's return from career limbo as stereotypical sexpot -- especially in a role as smart, sad and, yes, sexy as the one she has in "Sideways" -- makes her not only a sentimental but a deserving favorite.

As for "Hotel Rwanda's" Sophie Okonedo, it's an honor to be nominated.

The same goes for Laura Linney, who'll have to content herself with yet another nomination for yet another award-worthy performance, this one as the sympathetic, sometimes anguished wife of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. (At least she's nominated, which is more than "Kinsey" co-star Liam Neeson can say.) Someday, someway, Linney may find herself, at long last, in the winner's circle. But it probably won't be tonight.


Best director

Prediction: Martin Scorsese, "The Aviator"

Pick: Clint Eastwood, "Million Dollar Baby," or Alexander Payne, "Sideways"

And now we come to the evening's most intriguing showdown -- and a potential split decision.

That's because Oscar voters have to decide whether to rectify one of the Academy's most egregious oversights -- or confine themselves to the nominees at hand.

It's a tribute to the Academy's notoriously contrary directors' branch that they nominated Britain's low-key Mike Leigh for the stark but moving "Vera Drake." Then again, "Ray's" Taylor Hackford should be happy he made the final five.

Alas, I can't imagine a scenario in which Alexander Payne wins for "Sideways," despite its exquisitely calibrated shifts from slapstick absurdity to sobering drama, with every stop in between.

And then there were two.

If Academy members vote based on what's on screen, Eastwood should win for "Million Dollar Baby." He deserves to, as he transforms familiar material into a quietly transcendent cinematic experience through his spare, subdued artistry. It may well be his finest work.

No one could possibly argue, by contrast, that "The Aviator" represents Martin Scorsese's finest work. Broad but hardly deep, this colorful pageant gets off the ground but never truly takes flight. And if Scorsese wins an at-long-last Oscar, it won't really be for "The Aviator."

It'll be for "Raging Bull" (he lost in 1980 to Robert Redford, who won for "Ordinary People") or "The Last Temptation of Christ" (he lost in 1988 to Barry Levinson, who won for "Rain Man") or "GoodFellas" (he lost in 1990 to Kevin Costner, who won for "Dances With Wolves"). To say nothing of the times he wasn't even nominated for triumphs from 1976's "Taxi Driver" to 1997's "Kundun."

Scorsese reportedly alienated a multitude of Oscar voters in 2002, when shameless campaigning for "Gangs of New York" didn't pay off. (Roman Polanski, in a rare case of the Academy getting it right, won for "The Pianist," which in turn lost best picture to "Chicago," a far-from-rare example of the Academy getting it wrong.)

This year, Scorsese has a movie that Oscar voters like better -- and a competitor who has already been to the top. Which is why I'm betting Scorsese will finally take home an Oscar all his own tonight -- whether he deserves it this year or not.