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Oscar Ruminations Film Critic Dan Webster Sorts Through This Year’s Oscar Nominations

Even over the phone, from a distance of nearly 3,000 miles, my daughter’s voice rises to a near screech.

“Oh my god, Jack Nicholson?!” she cries. “They nominated Jack who-can’t-even-stop-being-himself Nicholson for Best Actor!?”

Yeah. They did. And so begins another chapter in the enduring saga of What Won’t That Crazy Academy Do Next?

Not that I have anything against Nicholson. I don’t even question his nomination, which he earned for the James L. Brooks movie “As Good As It Gets.”

This is Hollywood, after all, and the byzantine methods by which the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences makes its annual judgments are so regularly ridiculous that you just can’t take them too seriously.

Life’s too short to worry about such absurdities, as my daughter will one day learn.

For example, what are we to make of the fact that “Titanic,” which is on course to make an estimated gazillion dollars, has been nominated for 14 Academy Awards - but not for Best Original Screenplay.

Granted, the film’s storyline, which passes off blatant stereotype as class consciousness, may be its weakest part. But can a movie really be judged timeless in its overall quality if the story upon which it is based isn’t judged better than even that of a confection such as “The Full Monty”?

By the way, “The Full Monty” is one of the other Best Picture nominees.

Easy answer there. It makes no sense. Not much about Hollywood’s annual orgy of self-congratulation ever does. But we try to find the logic anyway. In that spirit, I offer the following list of the most glaring surprises, oversights, delights and outright absurdities that the Academy is offering us in 1998 (see the final act played out on television March 23):

The oversights

“Amistad” My friend Tim Mulligan, a fanatical Oscar observer who hosts an annual sunrise Oscar nominations party, calls this Steven Spielberg concoction “Yawnistad.” He thought it was long and boring, and he’s obviously not alone in his feelings.

Really, though, is this fair? “Amistad” is a serious attempt to look at a long-ignored chapter of American history. It is sumptuously filmed, skillfully directed, superbly acted by Djimon Hounsou as well as Anthony Hopkins, and it explores themes that question the very essence of humanism.

Not nominating this film for a major award is either oversight or pure pettiness at Spielberg’s expense. The feeling seems to be that he’s got his millions, he’s got his Oscar (for “Schindler’s List”), so he should just go away already.

Djimon Hounsou - While we’re on “Amistad,” by what strange rationale does the Academy ignore the powerful, dignified presence of this new face on the scene named Djimon Hounsou? I’m not arguing for racial quotas, nor do I see racist motives in every unfortunate decision by the culture at large, but it’s a documented fact that Hollywood has largely ignored African Americans who play lead roles.

Perhaps Hounsou didn’t deserve to win; first-time nominees seldom do. But the sheer emotional quality of the scene where, struggling with a language that he barely understands, he screams out “Give us us free!” provided moviegoers with one of the year’s most emotionally satisfying moments. For that alone, he deserved a Best Actor nomination.

Kevin Spacey - Best Picture nominee “L.A. Confidential” is this year’s critical darling. It’s won virtually every critics’ group honor, and was nominated for nine Oscars in all, including Best Director (for Curtis Hanson).

Blah, blah, blah. Did the performance of Kim Basinger, a Best Supporting Actress nominee, earn this film its much-deserved attention? Hardly. Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell and especially Kevin Spacey, none of whom were nominated for anything, provided the acting that made this film special.

Sure, Spacey was playing the oily character that he specializes in (a variation on the performance that won him an Oscar for “The Usual Suspects”). But he provides the film’s most striking moment, and it is his half-hearted stab at redemption that best symbolizes the film’s overall theme.

Rupert Everett - “My Best Friend’s Wedding” received mixed reviews, but it did decent box office ($127 million so far) and was far from the worst film that the summer had to offer. On the contrary, it may have been the best romance.

Not because of anything that the actors playing the love triangle did. Julia Roberts was her usual (pick one: radiant, competent, cloying, nauseating) self, Cameron Diaz showed a welcome comedic spark and the less said about Dermot Mulroney the better.

No, whatever joy there was in “My Best Friend’s Wedding” was provided by Rupert Everett. An openly gay actor playing an openly gay character might not be much of a stretch, but compared to Best Supporting Actor nominee Greg Kinnear or even the “In & Out” duo of Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck, Everett at least showed that he knew the territory. Besides that, he proved to be truly funny.

Rent the movie and watch the lunch scene, where he starts the group singing “Say a Little Prayer,” or the finale, where he says, “By God there will be dancing.” One thing is clear: The movie works because of him.

Jodie Foster - Of her two Academy Awards, I think Jodie Foster deserved only one. Her performance in “The Accused,” while certainly compelling, benefitted more from the emotional nature of the film’s theme, a public rape and the subsequent trial of the rapists. On the other hand, she was perfect in “Silence of the Lambs,” bringing core feminist sensibilities to what in hands lesser than Jonathan Demme’s would have been little more than a killer-thriller.

She was even better in “Contact,” Robert Zemeckis’ mediocre adaptation of the late Carl Sagan novel. Unafraid to push herself into the unsafe atmosphere of acting (see “Nell”), Foster imbues her character - a star-searcher damaged by a painful childhood - with the kind of angst that you seldom see on the big screen. In a better overall movie, her Best Actress nomination would have been a lock.

The surprises

Robert Forster - Many people have never heard of Robert Forster. Even fewer than have heard of Pam Grier, the other veteran star of Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown” who did not get nominated. But then Forster, stalwart and true-blue, was fortunate to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor - the sometime burial ground of overlooked talent.

Dustin Hoffman - No one was talking about Dustin Hoffman as a viable Best Actor nominee. At least not publicly. His movie “Wag the Dog” came at the end of the year and is a relatively minor, if sharply written, political comedy. This is why he will not win. But even producer Robert Evans admires Hoffman’s take on the stereotypical Hollywood producer - one, by the way, who carries a strong resemblance to Evans himself.

“The Full Monty” - OK, this is a cute little movie. I especially like the scene in the unemployment office when the cast, without even knowing it, begin unconsciously “moving” to Muzak rhythms. And it has a serious subtext, which concerns the basic fungibility of British workers and their attendant loss of self-esteem. But a Best Picture nominee? Please.

James L. Brooks - A noted television director, James L. Brooks has had some success on the big screen, “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment” chiefly among them.

Yet in adapting his own screenplay (with Mark Andrus) “As Good As It Gets,” Brooks showed himself to be less than competent as a director. Too long, sloppy in spots and disjointed, the film may have earned a Best Picture nomination - go figure - but Brooks was denied a Best Director nod. Justifiably.

The delights

Atom Egoyan - Secretariat, dead these eight-plus years, has a better chance of winning the next Kentucky Derby than Canadian director Atom Egoyan has of winning the Best Director Oscar. Still, it is heartening to see recognition go to someone who can create such an evocative look at grief as “The Sweet Hereafter.”

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck - It’s difficult to believe that two guys in their 20s have the maturity to write something such as Best Original Screenplay nominee “Good Will Hunting,” a script that has more understanding of the human psyche than any two dozen self-help books. It’s even more difficult to believe that Hollywood, still controlled by an elitist tradition, would take time to recognize the quality of what these gifted young men have created.

Peter Fonda - His sister and father both won Oscars, leaving Peter Fonda as the family member largely famous for producing and starring in “Easy Rider,” the most famous motorcycle movie ever made.

Still, he has been busy over the past couple of years, acting in one independent film after another. Teaming up with Victor Nunez proved the right decision, as it led to him playing the lead in “Ulee’s Gold” and garnering, deservedly, the Best Actor nomination that many once would have thought laughable.

Gloria Stuart - Her career began in 1932 with the film “The Old Dark House,” took a quarter-century hiatus between 1944 and 1979 and appears to have climaxed by her appearance in “Titanic.” No matter whether she wins (her role is little more than a cameo), just being named a Best Supporting Actress nominee is a well-deserved honor.

The absurdities

Paul Thomas Anderson - Imagine you’re a movie studio executive and someone pitches the following idea to you:

The setting is the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, the actors dress in disco fashions and they dance to disco music, the cast is headlined by a former Calvin Klein underwear model and an over-the-hill comedy star, and the storyline involves making porno movies and doing drugs. You’d probably pass, right?

New Line Cinemas, to its credit, did not. It gave its approval to director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose only previous credit was a little neo-noir called “Hard Eight” that nobody had ever heard of. And Anderson came through.

I’m not going to argue that the film he made, “Boogie Nights,” is for everyone. I will say, though, that it offered the most challenging material facing any director working in 1997. Taking it a step further, I will say that, for character-driven storytelling, it was the equal or better of any other film made in 1997.

And finally, I will say that no other film made in 1997 - not even “Titanic” - caused me to gasp at the sheer ability, if not audacity, of the person behind the camera as much as “Boogie Nights” did.

New Line Cinemas may not have passed on Anderson’s outlandish pitch, but the Academy certainly did. And there’s some comfort in that. We certainly wouldn’t want Anderson to get a big, Tarantino-sized head too soon.

Besides, with any luck we’ll hear from him again.

Maybe when my daughter gets an Academy vote.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos; Graphic: Get into the act

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: AWARDS SHOW The 70th annual Academy Awards show will be held on March 23 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

This sidebar appeared with the story: AWARDS SHOW The 70th annual Academy Awards show will be held on March 23 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.