ENTERTAINMENT / Movies
Early Oscar favorites arrive
(AP)
Updated: 2006-10-12 09:01
LOS ANGELES - Helen Mirren could be crowned best actress at the Academy
Awards. Seven-time loser Peter O'Toole may finally win that elusive
Oscar. Jack Nicholson could tie Katharine Hepburn with a record fourth
win.
And Clint Eastwood may establish himself as one of the winningest
directors in Oscar history.
Though plenty of Oscar-worthy films will not hit theaters until December,
many potential contenders and a few early front-runners have emerged for
Hollywood's big night Feb. 25.
Leading the way could be Eastwood, 2004's top winner, who won his second
best-picture and directing prizes with "Million Dollar Baby." Eastwood is
back with the World War II saga "Flags of Our Fathers," a sprawling
account of the Iwo Jima invasion and the controversial circumstances over
the raising of the U.S. flag there, an event immortalized in Associated
Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's picture.
Still to come late this year are such films as the musical "Dreamgirls,"
with Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles and Eddie Murphy, the post-World War II
tale "The Good German," directed by Steven Soderbergh and featuring
George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, and "The Good Shepherd," starring Matt
Damon and Angelina Jolie in a CIA saga directed by Robert De Niro.
But here's a rundown of films already in theaters or that have screened
for critics and caught Oscar buzz:
"Flags of Our Fathers" �� At 76, Eastwood gets better with age,
delivering his third major Oscar contender in four years after "Mystic
River" and "Million Dollar Baby." Along with his wins for "Million Dollar
Baby," Eastwood took the best-picture and director Oscars for his 1992
Western "Unforgiven." Now he's crafted a remarkably rich war film that
seamlessly flits from the ghastly chaos of battle to life on the
homefront, the story examining the hollowness of heroism manufactured in
the name of flag-waving propaganda. Another directing win would make
Eastwood one of only four directors to receive three or more Oscars (
John Ford won four and Frank Capra and William Wyler each won three).
Adam Beach and Ryan Phillippe are the standouts among a terrific ensemble
that includes Barry Pepper, Jesse Bradford and Jamie Bell.
"The Queen" - Mirren takes on the daunting challenge of playing a
universally known living icon, Queen Elizabeth II, and practically sews
up the best-actress race with a performance both majestically imperious
and tragically human. Mirren infuses caustic wit and wrenching pathos in
her portrait of the queen in crisis, facing the ire of her subjects over
the royal family's detachment in the wake of Princess Diana's death in
1997. The film could bull its way into the best-picture race and score
nominations for director Stephen Frears and co-star Michael Sheen, who
delivers an outstanding embodiment of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Venus" - O'Toole has played many imperious and human roles himself on
the way to seven best-actor nominations, all losses. Four years ago, the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose O'Toole for an honorary
Oscar for career achievement, a prize he initially thought about
rejecting because he felt he still had a chance to win outright. The
74-year-old O'Toole may have been right. He's a wondrously compassionate
old lecher in the darkly comic "Venus," playing an aged actor who has a
last fling �� in spirit, if not in body - with a friend's brassy teenage
grandniece (Jodie Whittaker)
"The Departed" - Always a bridesmaid at the Oscars, Martin Scorsese is
tied with four other filmmakers for awards futility: Five nominations, no
wins. His latest crime epic stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a cop who's a mole
in a Boston mob and Matt Damon as a gangster who's infiltrated the cops.
Much of the film is vintage Scorsese, brilliantly paced, sardonically
funny, viciously violent, though it grows fitful and fuzzy in the third
act. Still, it could land Scorsese in the best-director race (his last
loss, with "The Aviator," came two years ago against Eastwood). DiCaprio
and Damon have Oscar prospects, but three-time Oscar winner Nicholson as
a deliriously malignant crime boss dominates the film. A fourth win would
tie Nicholson with Hepburn for the most acting Oscars ever.
"The Last King of Scotland" - In his unassuming way, Forest Whitaker has
delivered marvelously understated roles in Eastwood's Charlie Parker film
biography "Bird" and the quirky "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai." Now
the soft-spoken Whitaker sheds his quiet demeanor for a grand, showy,
supple role as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who forges a simultaneously
paternal and tyrannical relationship with a Scottish doctor ( James
McAvoy). Whitaker could turn the best-actor category into a two-man race
with O'Toole.
"Volver" - If anyone's going to challenge Mirren for best actress, right
now, it's Penelope Cruz in Pedro Almodovar's oddball comic drama about
three generations of strong women making do without the fickle men in
their lives. Cruz is a spitfire, playing a mother coping with a terrible
crisis at home, a flighty sister, a willful daughter and a mother who
seemingly has returned from the dead. The film is Spain's
foreign-language Oscar entry, but "Volver" could follow other films by
Almodovar ("Talk to Her," "All About My Mother") that have broken out
into broader categories.
"Little Children" - Kate Winslet anchors a tale whose starkly satiric
look at the secrets lurking in suburbia is reminiscent of 1999
best-picture winner "American Beauty." Winslet plays a discontented
mother drawn into an affair with a stay-at-home dad amid an uproar over a
sex offender who moves back into the neighborhood. Along with Winslet,
the film features Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly and is directed by Todd
Field, who made 2001 best-picture nominee "In the Bedroom."
"Babel" - Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are the marquee names in Alejandro
Gonzalez Inarritu's mesmerizing culture-clash drama that follows U.S.,
Mexican, African and Japanese families linked by tragic events. Pitt and
Oscar winner Blanchett could easily grab supporting-acting nominations.
The supporting categories often recognize new faces, though, in this case
"Babel" co-star Adriana Barraza, a scene-stealer with her anguished
performance as a nanny in peril.
"Infamous" - By pure coincidence, a second-straight tale of author Truman
Capote's quest to write the crime classic "In Cold Blood" lands in
theaters. After last year's best-picture nominee "Capote" earned the
best-actor prize for Philip Seymour Hoffman, have Oscar voters had their
fill of the Truman show? With a blackly comic lead performance compared
to Hoffman's sober approach, Toby Jones is magnificent as Capote, while
Sandra Bullock as author Harper Lee and Daniel Craig (the new James Bond)
as death-row inmate Perry Smith have solid chances for supporting
nominations.
"Bobby" - Following the Robert Altman school of ensemble filmmaking,
writer-director Emilio Estevez has assembled enough excellent
performances in a single film to fill out the supporting Oscar
categories. Centered on two dozen or so characters present at the
Ambassador Hotel the night Robert Kennedy was assassinated, the film
offers standout roles by Laurence Fishburne, Sharon Stone, William H.
Macy, Anthony Hopkins and Demi Moore.
"Catch a Fire" - Like Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland," Derek Luke
does a splendid job taking on an African accent and delivers a powerhouse
performance as a South African refinery worker and family man falsely
accused of sabotage by the apartheid authorities. Oscar winner Tim
Robbins may have supporting-actor prospects for a role both humane and
creepy as a government official whose single-mindedness in catching
rebels winds up fanning the flames of dissent.
"World Trade Center" and "United 93" - Oliver Stone's "World Trade
Center" and Paul Greengrass's "United 93" won acclaim as the first
big-screen dramatizations of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The unknown
ensemble cast of "United 93" is not likely to grab any acting
nominations, though the film could compete in other Oscar categories.
"World Trade Center" has better prospects in major Oscar categories,
especially for Oscar winner Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena, who star as
policemen trapped in the rubble of the twin towers after they rushed in
to help victims.
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