THE REST OF THE FORECAST...

BEST DIRECTOR Want to Win: David Lynch, Mulholland Drive (because he's always the cream of the crop) Probably Will: Ron Howard, A Beautiful Mind Should've Been Nominated: Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums

BEST ACTOR Want to Win: Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom Probably Will: Denzel Washington, Training Day Should've Been Nominated: Gene Hackman, The Royal Tenenbaums

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Want to Win: Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast Probably Will: Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast Should've Been Nominated: Steve Buscemi, Ghost World

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Want to Win: Jennifer Connelly, A Beautiful Mind (because she's overdue) Probably Will: Jennifer Connelly, A Beautiful Mind/Maggie Smith, Gosford Park (even odds; my shallow, unscientific best-looking-nominee theory is threatened here by the presence of Marisa Tomei and Kate Winslet) Should've Been Nominated: Gwyneth Paltrow, The Royal Tenenbaums

Well.

The last time a Ron Howard movie was heavily nominated for Academy Awards (1995, Apollo 13), it was joined in the Best Picture category by the some of the least enduring films you can imagine: Babe, Braveheart, Il Postino, and Sense & Sensibility. Adhering to tradition or starting one, the most recent Howard opus (Opie?) to earn nods in several major categories, A Beautiful Mind, leads the lamest pack of Best Picture nominees since 1995.

Will it be the whitewashed biopic of the schizophrenic mathematician who discovered the formula for love? Will it be the fantasy movie that stops dead in the middle to debate an issue whose outcome was the greatest certainty in the history of cinema? (For me, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring never recovered from that roundtable spitball session in which the characters bicker over who will carry the stupid ring for the remainder of the trilogy.) How about Gosford Park, the first Robert Altman ensemble piece to actually compare unfavourably to watching paint dry? And don't get me started on Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!, a feature-length "Emperor's New Clothes." People called it revolutionary, but really it's confirmation of Luhrmann's one-trick pony status, as the film is his William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet on an elephantine canvas. Granted, Luhrmann's "one trick" is strange.

I guess I'm rooting for the quiet, sensitive In the Bedroom, although for better or worse, its competition is more memorable. But I think Moulin Rouge! owns the trophy, because Academy members gave it to a Russell Crowe vehicle just twelve months ago, failed to honour the first in the Star Wars trilogy (plus, the majority of the voting body has moved out of their parents' basements by now), and won't understand the plot mechanics of Gosford Park, though they'll tell each other that they do. Moulin Rouge! is pop they can pretend is art and therefore feel righteous about without alienating the masses.

The category that works me into the thickest lather is "Best Actress." Let me begin by refuting statements made by Peter Bracke in a DVD File editorial a couple of weeks ago. While this was a typical rush job by Bracke, he is not alone in the sentiments he expressed, which amounted to a desire to abolish the Best Actress category on the grounds that you don't call woman doctors doctresses, etc. You want to see real sexism in action? Lump the women into the Actor category and see how many are nominated. "Best Actress" allows not for segregation, but equal opportunity.

I refuse to acknowledge distinguishing between male and female turns as sexist, nor have I ever been one to accuse the Academy of racism simply because African-American performers are so rarely nominated, especially in multiple. (This year's triple threat of Denzel Washington, Will Smith, and Halle Berry is indeed unheard-of.) Blame lies with Hollywood itself, not the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: black actors are for the most part still tokenized in big releases (see Don't Say a Word) and ghettoized in small ones (The Wash), and you can't blame A.M.P.A.S. for refusing to honour either or. Once in awhile a film slips through the cracks, like Spike Lee's Bamboozled, but in the scheme grand, if you build it, they will come (Berry, Smith, and Washington were too powerful to ignore in proto-respectable material). In the meantime, do forgive the Academy for failing to recognize Orlando Jones' neo-Buckwheat in Evolution or Snoop Dogg as a gangsta ghost in Bones.

As much as I admired Berry's work, even as I doubted Leticia Musgrove's actions (Monster's Ball's screenplay crumbles upon the slightest bit of scrutiny), I think I will abstain from championing a Best Actress nominee. If you've read this site from top to bottom or subscribe to our newsletter, you sense that I'm antagonistic towards the snubbing of Ghost World's Thora Birch in this category. Whatever she did in that film, and I find it more difficult to intellectualize with repeat viewings, it touched my soul. That's the only reaction I trust--the only resource I have--as both a critic and a moviegoer.

Ms. Birch deserves Renee Zellweger's slot; the attention Zellweger got for Bridget Jones's Diary seemed based first on her willingness to gain weight for the role, second her British accent (she was born and raised in Texas, for those of you who don't already know), and third her comedic timing. Meanwhile, Birch was so authentic that critics felt no need to qualify her turn as the wounded Enid in Ghost World--for which she underwent a physical transformation and a sense-of-humour transplant very similar to Zellweger's (though she adopted an invisible English lilt for a different film, The Hole)--by praising its accoutrements.

Enid was the most human and thus bravest characterization I've seen in God knows how long. Putting this bias aside, Nicole Kidman reminded me too much of a coughing marionette in Moulin Rouge!, and Iris' Judi Dench, who ought to be nominated from this point forward under "Best Miramax Real Estate," will be up for an Oscar again in 2003, anyway. I adore Sissy Spacek, and I wonder if that clouds my judgment on her contribution to In the Bedroom--she's offscreen for the majority of the piece. My prediction is that Berry will win, but my heart is with Spacek and my heartbreak is with the un-nominated Birch.

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For a complete nominees list, vist the official Academy Awards website.