Sean Weitner | Best Picture

Not a lot has been said about the Best Picture race in and of itself, but I think it's pretty fascinating. Check it:

A Beautiful Mind
The Fellowship of the Ring
Gosford Park
In the Bedroom
Moulin Rouge

Now, "pretty fascinating" might be putting it too strongly. But what I really find interesting is that Gosford Park took Black Hawk Down's spot. Gosford Park is the superior movie, don't get me wrong, but Black Hawk Down is a war movie from Ridley Scott; not only did Gladiator take home many of last year's Oscars, but America's in a war not entirely removed from the situation that Black Hawk Down chronicles. Personally, I found that all my attempts at empathy with the characters in Black Hawk Down just bounced off the thick gloss on the screen — Ridley Scott has some kind of mojo that has stopped me from getting emotionally involved in any of his films since Alien, and I don't know what it is, but I think it has something to do with the fact that the movie never seemed authentially grimy, instead feeling like an over-art-directed fascimile thereof. (Am I the only person among us who's seen this movie?)

Nevertheless: The problems I have with the film shouldn't translate into problems the Academy has with the film. (Those two things have never correlated in the past). But as our predictions show, we all thought it was a shoo-in. How'd it get missed?

And I say this sincerely: I think it was political. I think about the post-9/11 all-star benefit that Hollywood organized — the one in a secure location with Jack Nicholson answering the phone and taking pledges? — and how covertly and overtly political that was: "Let's not go to war" being the basic message. Could Black Hawk Down's snub be an extension of that logic? "We're not going to support a war film that's assiduously devoid of political context and that shows America slaughtering their enemies."

It may just have something to do with Black Hawk Down having no stand-out characters, no potential Oscar nominees, where Gosford Park had many. Also: Do you think the Academy is really hip to how great Gosford Park is, or do they just like it's patina of British upper-crust respectability? Do they get the magnitude of Altman's achievement, or are they throwing just throwing it the old Merchant-Ivory bone?

Andy Stilp | No hope for a trend here

The unfortunate thing is that any film that's part of a debate for the notorious Four Weddings fifth slot for Best Picture habitually has no chance to make it, much like the strange Heisman candidate invited to the Downtown Athletic Club.

The curious thing is that if you view what choices Oscar has made in the past, there's no hope for predicting the winner without pointing directly at the other awards shows like the Golden Globes. I mean, if we just look at the Oscars: Last year's win? Gladiator. Like Titanic, that lends itself to Fellowship — Hollywood loves the sound epic. The year before that? American Beauty. That lends itself to In The Bedroom. Before that, Shakespeare in Love. Close to the same vein as Gosford Park or Moulin Rouge in that period-picture sense, but SIL also had the largest marketing campaign in a long time, which would … um … and there it breaks down. You can't really point to any history on paper and get the same read as you would, say, for the Most Valuable Player of the NBA.

This may be Captain Obvious talking, and I feel this sucks some of the thrill out of it, but we can look at the Golden Globes and read how this evening will go. Even last year, with basically three Best Pictures worthy of the title (and lo, they all went home with four to five awards each), it was Liz Taylor doddering around with the Golden Globe envelope for Gladiator that tipped us off.

Now, last year was a rare year where the Best Director's movie didn't win Best Picture (pity poor Senores Spielbergo y Soderbergho), and Sean's thread earlier cultivated talk about that, especially when we have directors whose movies aren't up. I say that if your movie isn't up for Best Picture, kiss your directorial chances goodbye. Sadly, this happened to Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), who, in my opinion, did the slam-dunk job that year.

So say goodbye, Messrs. Lynch and Scott. Mr. Jackson, you may be skipped over because you look like a Trekkie and because there are just as good things coming down the pipeline that may earn you merit (wanna bet The Return of the King gets loaded up with accolade for the trilogy?). I guess when I started this note, I didn't expect to apply the same postulate twice, but for Best Director, too, partial process of elimination leave us with the viable candidates: Altman and Howard. And Howard won't win, just because.

Sean Weitner | Oscarness

I had actually thought of Moulin Rouge as the swing film that might give way to Gosford Park or Monster's Ball; by the criteria you outline, Andy, then I would see the Best Picture race reduced to three films.

As you suggest, the only trend to be concerned about here is Oscarness — that ineffable quality that ties all, or most, Best Picture winners together — and while some may think that lines The Fellowship of the Rings up for accolades, the truth is that there has not been a movie since, I don't know, Dances With Wolves that has fulfilled the precepts of Oscarness better than A Beautiful Mind. A non-ostentatious, non-auteurist director? Check. A non-ensemble piece with a celebrated lead actor? Check. Serious, but not depressing, subject matter? Check. A love-conquers-all ending? Check. Mental illness? Check. General warmness and fuzziness? Check. One distinguishing factor that makes it seem unique? A twist before the third act, check. It's such an Oscar-pander-fest, in fact, that I won't be surprised when Howard wins Best Director (there were many reports about him being crushed about losing for Apollo 13, especially because he was directing that year's Best Director winner, Mel Gibson, in Ransom at the time), particularly since, as you note, they have two more years to laud Jackson.

Every year, the films that get nominated for Best Picture get a little bit better, and then the Academy always manages to choose the worst from among them.

I should also say that I had hoped Monster's Ball would get nominated. I wasn't mad about the film, but it does well by way of the Oscarness checklist while maintaining more emotional truth than In the Bedroom or A Beautiful Mind, and its distributor, Lion's Gate, is a real underdog company. A nod for Monster's Ball would have been a nice sign that you don't have be owned by a major corporation to compete. (And we can all agree that Dreamworks is effectively a major corporation, right?)

Andy Ross | Psycho babble

Instead of playing the statistics, here, let's think about who's voting. They don't play the numbers; they just vote. I think that all the movies Mr. Stilp listed have one thing in common — other actors really wanted a crack at the roles. Twenty-five percent of the Academy voters are actors. Therefore, I think that Gosford Park is a strong dark horse. Every actor wants a writer to make them sound witty and superior — British. Plus, every character, down to the smallest, was fully developed enough for an actor to sink their teeth into.

Same thing goes for Moulin Rouge. What actor doesn't want the rush of being in a musical and making out with Nicole Kidman and/or Ewan McGregor?

But, A Beautiful Mind? The only character with the kind of glossy emotion actors love was Jennifer Connelly's.

While this role-love may not be applied to the actors' categories (there are appearances to keep), I do think it holds strong sway over Best Picture voting.

Sean Weitner | Teched

I think John Nash of A Beautiful Mind is an actor's dream job. It's full of little craft-y flourishes, and the character is a passionate genius/husband/father who may be crazy, but is no more crazy than us, 'cause we can see Ed Harris too. I think an actor would value the role for the same reason that people are knocking on Sean Penn's I Am Sam nomination; it's overtly actorly. It's a holy fool role — you get to be crazy and perfect.

In fact: Who wants to bet against me for A Beautiful Mind taking Best Picture? Name the wager.

Andy Ross | Wrong

Crowe's character is just too much. The twitches and forehead touching are nice, and he pulls it off really well — I think he's locked for Best Actor — but it's not the kind of role that carries a movie. Plus, no movie gets carried to Best Picture just on one actor; it takes a village of actors. I will take your bet. And you will owe me a matinee and small drink.

Andy Stilp | Crowe's feast

The role of John Nash definitely didn't make A Beautiful Mind a vehicle, per se, but it definitely carried the movie a great distance and could've taken it all the way without the ample support it was given. It was a festival of acting, and who could really turn that role down? You get to play a genius, you get to act crazy, you get to age, you get the accent — it's a veritable smorgasbord of craft. (Does it deserve recognition for makeup for the eight minutes of the movie when Nash is old? Hell no.)

But still, of the members in this village, many could've been subbed out for less hearty artisans. Jennifer Connelly's role had its legs cut out from under it when Akiva Goldsman put the pedal to the metal and motored past the healing process. Do we get the satisfaction of the healing? Nope. Is this a message that he never totally heals? Oh, sure, in some part, but damn it all, we skip the fourth act. Ed Harris played Gene Kranz played Christof played Francis X. Hummel. I will rave about Paul Bettany until he finally gets some kind of nod somewhere, and perhaps this is the ungluing of my viewpoint. He, like Harris, was in there for The Trick part of the story, but ended up as a strikingly endearing non-character. This could be your sign that they wanted this to be more than a character vehicle. (I enjoy these arguments where I end up arguing both sides.) Oh, and was it just me, or did Christopher Plummer look drowned in foundation?

Ultimately, though, I think the Academy is in a tough place. My prediction is that many voters laid down their arms and finally muttered, "Okay, Russell Crowe is seriously one of the finest actors of the generation and not just a pompous flash in the pan. I guess … I guess we have to honor that," voted for A Beautiful Mind for Best Picture, and turned in their ballot, shaking their head no and massaging their temples. What's the alternative? The only other film not to have any dark-horse tint to it is Fellowship, and the move there is to give the bonus baby to Return of the King at the end of the trilogy. Then again, the Patriots did win the Super Bowl. I guess most anything can happen, although my money is on ABM. (One fun thing to do is track the futures markets for these races at the World Sports Exchange. Russell Crowe has absolutely dominated his field from its inception. His share value is moving towards unity.)

Andy Ross | As long as we quibble

Since Andy S. brought up all the other characters in A Beautiful Mind, may I just add that I find Anthony Rapp very distracting as an actor? He played Bender of the Sol and Bender pair, and was previously in Adventures in Babysitting and Six Degrees of Separation. He's got such a stage-actor-lost-in-a-movie thing going on that I can't stand it. I first noticed it in Six Degrees and later much more in Man of the Century. He'll say a line and the freeze, looking to the next person talking, like he's passing them the ball. I find that kind of thing horribly unnerving during a movie.

Andy Stilp | Rent checks are due

Anthony Rapp certainly has struggled to find that feel for film. As a whole, the only member of the original Rent cast to truly make their mark outside of it has been Jesse L. Martin.

John C. Reilly is another actor who clearly belongs on a stage, not on film. I would imagine his "True West" with Philip Seymour Hoffman was outstanding. Hoffman appears to do just fine in front of the camera. Strangely, he studied with Matthew Lillard at the Circle in the Square in New York.

Matthew Lillard needs to be ritualistically executed.

O'Doyle rules!

Andy Ross | Bag of worms

I do not want to be connected in any way with Andy S.'s John C. Reilly thing. My surname name starts with an R. and I just dislike Anthony Rapp, not John C. Reilly.

Sean Weitner | The minutia kings

I love that the Andys recognize, know and can expound on the career of Anthony Rapp — an actor I wouldn't recognize if I were watching "The Anthony Rapp Show" — enough to reference Law & Order's Jesse L. Martin. God bless you guys.

On the topic of unliked performances, let me bring up Peter Boyle as Buck in Monster's Ball. It doesn't help that Buck is pretty thinly-conceived, spouting race-hatred vitriol from the second he's on screen and only letting up in order to deliver some colorblind misogyny. But there's no shock in such utterances coming from Boyle, only bemusement; he's a fine, fine actor with a career to be proud of, but if the role is he codger, well, he's leeched his ability to play it dramatically by playing it so comically in "Everybody Loves Raymond." He's great on that show, but his rhythms here are the same as his rhythms there. And Buck ends up being the butt of the movie's few punchlines, further compromising his status as someone whose venom you can take seriously. I'm not saying anyone could have done Buck too terribly well without a script rewrite that deepens the melodramatic sketch of his character — it's a twirling moustache role, really — but Boyle is miscast here.

Other sore-thumb performances from the nominated films? I agree with the Andys' distaste for some of A Beautiful Mind's bit players, but other than that, most everyone acquitted themselves, though I wasn't crazy about Zellweger's nominated turn in Bridget Jones's Diary.

I liked everyone in The Fellowship of the Rings, even Sean Astin, who's dealt a nasty blow in this column (on the right side). I think that William Mapother gave a fine, uncelebrated and underbearing performance in In the Bedroom. Not even John Leguizamo's much-bemoaned turn as a lisping Toulouse-Latrec in Moulin Rouge turned me off, though having the one black actor in the film be a mute, musclebound mule was a turn-off.

Andy Ross | Ditto, Ditt No

I think you invested too much of that character's failure in Boyle's performance. What was he supposed to do when his first lines were just a vitriolic racist rant? What removes this role, with its cud-chewing southern drawl and sloping walk, from that of Russell Crowe? The difference is that Crowe had a better developed character to apply all that physical attention to. I think Boyle tries his best with a bad role.

And, I take umbrage to the Renee Zellweger thing. While I have never been a fan of her and her quivering lip, I think she was made for that part. Do you not like her, or is it that Bridget Jones's Diary was aimed at the audience it was aimed at? I for one knew nothing of the book and really liked her and Colin Firth's ability to turn his character from a jerk into a good guy so quickly.

Sean Weitner | Jonesing

Boyle was miscast. He did everything he could with the role, but it should have been apparent to director Mark Forster that he couldn't do much. Imagine an actor of similar age to Boyle, like, say, Frank Gorshin. (So long as obscure actors are the order of the day.) Everything coming out of Gorshin's lips would have been unique and interesting, even though it was just 1-D racism — his delivery of such curmudgeonly stuff woudn't be marred by overfamiliarity.

I just didn't care for Bridget Jones's Diary's sloppy direction. It was just such a … normative romantic comedy. I think that Firth and Grant were excellent in the film. Zellweger's fine, but I guess I just find it easy to project the film's lassitude onto her. Like the film, Zellweger as Jones is frumpy, directionless, irresolute, etc. I can see Zellweger, who's a gifted comic actress, exceling with that character type, and even doing it British, but … well, the problem is that the movie didn't do it for me. Zellweger, like Boyle, did what she could.