Word: tigers
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...need help, dear speculators in the far corners of the world. (For movies, you're in the corner; we Americans are in the center.) This year is a particular challenge: the nominations offer the battle of the epics (Gladiator vs. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as well as the schizophrenic saga of the director with two movies (Steven Soderbergh, with Traffic and Erin Brockovich). Since nobody is an expert on this subject, we can blithely pass along bits of received wisdom and arcane Oscar lore so you will be better informed than your neighbor. To succeed in the Oscar sweepstakes, read...
While one man (Soderdergh) was nominated for two films, one film (Crouching Tiger) was nominated as Best Film twice?once in the main category, the other in the Foreign Language Film niche. Ang Lee's Mandarin masterpiece of martial artistry (officially a Taiwanese entry) will win the "lesser" prize, the one in which films from every country but the U.S. compete as equal. The movie is something of a critical and popular phenomenon in North America; it is already the all-time top-grossing foreign language film, with $60 million in the till so far and hopes of reaching...
...Crouching Tiger's list of challengers could be burlier. Among the films submitted by their home industries but not selected for the top five slots by the Academy screening committee were some highly esteemed works: Hong Kong's In the Mood for Love, Iran's A Time for Drunken Horses, South Korea's Chunhyang, Sweden's Songs from the Second Floor and Thailand's 6ixtynin9. In their place are the Czech Republic's Divided We Fall (a barren couple named Mary and Joseph take in a Jewish refugee during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia) and Mexico's Amores Parros/Life...
...that, once every 73 years, the Academy could acknowledge that the year's best film was in a language other than English. It also received no nominations in the acting categories, but that omission didn't stop Braveheart or The Last Emperor from winning Best Picture. More important, Crouching Tiger fulfills every Academy mandate for epic entertainment: a big story, beautiful stars, sweeping vistas (it's got as much desert as Lawrence of Arabia and more forests than Gump), strong roles for women in a time when those are both a rarity and a plus. One other thing...
...Anglo-American one. Traffic could best them both, if the Academy wants to reward modern, jagged, serious entertainment. But if the members are thinking old and epic, it will probably be old West (ancient Rome), not old East (Qing dynasty). In other words: if the winner can be Crouching Tiger, it will be Gladiator...