Oscar Watch

Take this for your consideration: Last year, four of the five Academy Award nominees for Best Picture and 17 of the 20 nominated performances arrived after Labor Day. So grab your ballots, scribble a few pre-fall possibilities — perhaps Rupert Everett for My Best Friend's Wedding, Peter Fonda for Ulee's Gold, Judi Dench for Mrs. Brown, that monstrous manipulator (Aaron Eckhart — remember the name) from In the Company of Men — and leave the rest blank, then check out September for some real contenders. Ensemble casts can mean trouble at Oscar time (too many good supporting performances often split the voters), but there's great buzz about the men of the '50s noir thriller L.A. Confidential — newcomer Guy Pearce as a by-the-book cop and Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, and James Cromwell as his corrupt colleagues — as well as the women of the '70s family drama The Ice Storm: Sigourney Weaver and Joan Allen as frostbitten suburban wives, alongside the ever-more- affecting Christina Ricci. Ice Storm's star, Kevin Kline, could also get noticed for In & Out. The gay-or-not-gay comedy could give his costar Debbie Reynolds another shot at the gold (since she was snubbed for playing another Mother last year). Finally, in yet another weak year for leading actresses, farm women Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer could do well with A Thousand Acres, though the liberties the film takes with Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel could hurt their chances.