Thursday, 12 February 1998

OSCAR NOMINATION SPECIAL
As Hillary might say, it takes a village to guess all the Oscar nominations. The only person to get 19 of the 20 nominees in the top four categories (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Actor) was the lovely and talented Keith Collins. The only miss was the Best Director nod awarded to Peter Cattaneo for The Full Monty. But not a single person guessed that. Keith's alternate guess was Jim Brooks for As Good As It Gets. It didn't get that good.

Keith blew the supporting nominations, as did so many others. Robert Forster did in many of you who expected Rupert Everett from My Best Friend's Wedding instead. And while every one of you guessed that Gloria Stuart and Kim Basinger would get nominated as Supporting Actress, you also thought Allison Elliott, Sigourney Weaver and Christina Ricci would get the nod. The only person to get both of the male and female supporting nods right was Jeffrey Paul Arthur Ellis, also talented and lovely, but tagged with an objectionably long name.

The screenplay nominations, which many of you skipped, left screenplay nominee of the future Marc Andreyko as the top dog with 80 percent correct. For him, Titanic was a better original screenplay than Deconstructing Harry, and Amistad was a better adaptation than The Sweet Hereafter, but not for the Academy. Screenplay wasn't the only category to go without full-on competition. Very few of you put in your two cents for anything more than the top eight categories listed. But that's no real surprise, especially in the documentary, shorts and foreign categories, in which most of the films nominated haven't been available for viewing in this country. Even here in L.A.

A special nod to Kevin O, who offered up an opinion for every category the Academy offers. Kevin didn't guess all the nominees, just a list of the people he thought should win. And now that the nominations are out, the only category in which his favorite isn't nominated is Best Make-Up. Kevin wanted The Fifth Element to take the Oscar. Sorry, but it must be exciting to have a rooting interest in every other category on Oscar Night and during the tech awards the night before.

Thank you all for writing, and we'll try to come up with a nice prize for your Oscar-night predictions in March.

READER OF THE DAY: Turns out that people really like the THX logo before movies, but reader Tony A may have lost his mind: "That slow THX build and crescendo really conveys a sense of power. In fact, I think the sound should be used in more everyday applications. How about a THX doorbell? Or alarm clock? The best would be a THX car alarm. 'The Police are Listening.'"

E ME: The box office awaits. How will the nominations effect the weekend's business? Can Titanic rise again or will it continue its incredibly slow decent towards the $20 million horizon? Your e-mail helps me tell the tale.