Oscar Race

Conventional wisdom says the races in the top Oscar categories are all but locked. Colin Firth and Natalie Portman will win the leads, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo provide the support and "The King's Speech" cleans up for picture and director. But judging from how the three academy members we polled ? a writer, an actor and a director, all men ? marked their ballots, upsets could still occur. Which is why, of course, we tune in on Oscar night. Because in that moment between the opening of the envelope and the winner being announced, anything remains possible.

Hollywood celebrated a foreign invasion at Sunday's Golden Globes, as films and television shows with a distinctly international pedigree collected many of the evening's prizes. "The Artist," French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius's ode to silent movies, was the night's top honoree, winning three awards. In the comedy or musical category, the black-and-white movie was named best picture, while Jean Dujardin was named actor for his performance as a silent film star made obsolete by the arrival of talkies.

Ethel Waters The famed blues, jazz and gospel vocalist (1896-1977) made her movie debut in the 1929 musical "On With the Show!" She became the second African American to earn an Oscar nomination, for her supporting role in the 1949 drama "Pinky. " Hattie McDaniel The first African American (1895-1952) to win an Academy Award, for her supporting role as Mammy in 1939's "Gone with the Wind. " When the NAACP complained in the 1940s about her playing servant roles, she said, "I'd rather play a maid and make $700 a week then be one for $7. " Dorothy Dandridge The beautiful singer and actress (1922-65)

Imagine, if you will, a Hollywood version of fantasy football pitting the likes of Margaret Thatcher, J. Edgar Hoover, Marilyn Monroe and F. Scott Fitzgerald in a head-to-head battle with, well, a bunch of nobodies. Daunting, to say the least. Yet these powerful, iconic, often historical figures are likely to be doing just that this film award season, in a competition that squares them off against such characters as a nebbishy lawyer and an illegal immigrant gardener. It seems evident from the start just who will come out on top: Anecdotally, audiences and voters seem to naturally gravitate toward big-screen portrayals of the powerful, the movers and the shakers, and celebrity types.

Four years ago, a controversial British film called "Death of a President" stormed into the Toronto International Film Festival. The media was abuzz about its premise, which imagined that George W. Bush had been assassinated and Dick Cheney had ascended to the presidency. It became the hottest ticket of the festival that year and inspired intense debate about the limits of artistic and political expression — before fizzling in commercial release. Toronto, the preeminent North American gathering for top-tier filmmakers that starts Thursday and runs through next weekend, generates more heat and contention than almost any other festival.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a new regulation Wednesday taking aim at filmmakers it perceived to be "cheerleaders" for nominated films during the Oscar race. The new measure prohibits academy members who are not "directly connected" with a nominated film from hosting screenings of the film for fellow academy members -- a frequently utilized award season campaign tactic.

Despite strong discouragement from battle-weary film critics, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is going ahead with plans to distribute awards for superior achievement during 1985. Nominating ballots will be mailed out Jan. 11, the nominees will be revealed Feb. 5, and on March 24, with millions curiously looking on around the world, they'll hand the Oscars out. But to whom? And for what? Somehow, it always works out.

On Saturday night at the Miramax party, Harvey Weinstein worried that maybe he pushed too hard for "Shakespeare in Love," a film he co-produced in his spare time when he wasn't running the company. It turns out he worried for nothing. An Oscar night with more genuine drama than most of the movies that Hollywood produces came to an appropriately surprising ending when "Shakespeare in Love" won seven Academy Awards, including best picture, to runner-up "Saving Private Ryan's" five.

It is a tribute to the unique success of director Steven Spielberg that he has become the most talked-about person in this year's Oscar race for not receiving a nomination for "The Color Purple."

Universal Pictures was the first studio out of the blocks in the annual Academy Awards Campaign Marathon recently--but was it a false start? Universal shot ahead of the pack when it sent a four-color mailer to members of all branches of the Academy, inviting them to one of three dinners prepared by studio chefs, followed by screenings of "Gorillas in the Mist" (which may be Universal's strongest Oscar candidate this year).

Comedies are often the most talked-about movies of the year, but even the good ones are often overlooked when it comes to awards season. Hoping to buck the trend is "Bridesmaids," the raunchy, female-driven ensemble that racked up close to $170 million at the box office this summer, spawned a slew of copycat scripts and served as a touchpoint for a women-in-comedy discussion. The film received an unexpected boost Wednesday when it received two nominations from the Screen Actors Guild — one for performance by a cast and a supporting female actor nod for Melissa McCarthy.

Even before filming was finished, more than a few Hollywood wags and insiders were saying that Steven Spielberg's "War Horse" had the look of a thoroughbred in the annual Hollywood derby known as Oscar season. Spielberg's films had certainly racked up Academy Award nominations in the past when he ventured into wartime epics ("Schindler's List," "Saving Private Ryan"), bookshelf adaptations ("The Color Purple," "Jaws") or an evocative tale of youth and friendship ("E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial")

As the fall season's first wave of film awards and nominations roll in, the Oscar picture continues to be a murky mass of contenders and question marks. On Tuesday, "The Artist," a black-and-white silent film from the French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, picked up momentum with top prizes from the New York Film Critics Circle and five nominations for the Los Angeles-based Spirit Awards, which honor independent movies. The accolades established "The Artist," a Weinstein Co. release about a silent film star who fades with the advent of the talkies, as the closest thing to a front-runner in this chaotic season.

Like a police force committed to public reinvention after being chastened for its tactics, the Brazilian action sequel "Elite Squad: The Enemy Within" hopes to answer charges that the first "Elite Squad" movie was little more than a fascistic glorification of violent slum cleansing by take-no-prisoners authorities. This time around, righteous Nascimento (Wagner Moura) encounters a wake-up call regarding the moral costs of his law enforcement philosophy. His controversial success in brutally quashing drug dealers unwittingly opens a window for the dirty cops and politicians who profited from the drug trade to take their place in the slums as direct extortionists.

First came the political primaries. Now the Oscar race seems to be caught up in the leader-of-the-pack syndrome. The New York Film Critics Circle last week pulled a Florida, inching the date for its annual award selection for best films of the year to the front of the critics heap, in similar fashion to the Sunshine State's move to shift its Republican primary ahead of the rest. The critics group's move to announce its awards Nov. 28 — two weeks earlier than usual, ahead of the National Board of Review, whose announcement traditionally has been the kickoff to the season of accolades — was met by harsh criticism from many online bloggers and awards consultants.

In an effort to rein in what many in Hollywood felt was excessive Oscar campaigning last winter, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences on Wednesday issued new rules governing how studios and filmmakers can tout their movies to voters this season. The guidelines seek to curtail some of the lavish parties thrown by studios and encourage the actual viewing of films in theaters. The changes could give a boost to smaller outfits that don't have as much money to spend on campaigns.

The field for the 1988 Oscar race rounded the far turn Monday as final ballots were mailed to the 4,600 Academy Awards voters, and with just nine days to the voting deadline, the studios and agencies riding the nominees have gone to the whip. Advertising campaigns accelerated in the industry's trade papers last week, with Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter carrying nearly 200 Oscar "reminders" and screening announcements between them.

Conventional wisdom says the races in the top Oscar categories are all but locked. Colin Firth and Natalie Portman will win the leads, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo provide the support and "The King's Speech" cleans up for picture and director. But judging from how the three academy members we polled ? a writer, an actor and a director, all men ? marked their ballots, upsets could still occur. Which is why, of course, we tune in on Oscar night. Because in that moment between the opening of the envelope and the winner being announced, anything remains possible.