News + Notes

EW Presents...

Features

Behind Academy Lines

THREE OSCAR VOTERS EXPLAIN THEIR PICKS

More

By Josh Young

Oscar's journey to middle-earth may have taken three years, but the smart money says the golden guy will finally arrive on Feb. 29. To hear most Oscar watchers tell it, the Academy will bestow several statuettes on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, not necessarily for this chapter but as a thank-you for all 558 minutes of the trilogy. Or will they? We've asked three of the 5,803 voting-eligible Academy members to break their vow of silence and give us some inside look at the key races. (Hey, it's not like they're sharing their screeners on the Web.) The verdict was the Rings team's worst nightmare: Two of the three aren't hailing The Return of the King. (Please note: This sampling is about as unscientific as you can get.)

THE PRODUCER A past Oscar winner (as producer of a best picture), our producer believes smaller films fared so well this year because of the preferential voting system used in the nomination process, in which a first choice carries more weight than a second, and so on. ''I vote to nominate films I want recognized and not films that I know will be recognized,'' he says. ''I know I could be throwing my vote away, but by putting something in the top slot I can help a worthy film be nominated.'' On the final ballot, he checks off his most deserving:

BEST PICTURE MYSTIC RIVER Our producer calls Mystic River and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World the two best films of the year. To recognize both, he's splitting his vote. ''It's always peculiar when you vote picture one way and director another, but you do it to honor two movies when there isn't a singular standout.'' Though Rings wasn't a consideration (''All those armies and those hobbits and the technical hoo-ha...I just didn't like it''), he predicts it will prevail. ''The sheer number of people who worked on the movies, assuming they are Academy members, will power it to a win.''

BEST DIRECTOR PETER WEIR, MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD First, a caveat: ''Sofia Coppola is really talented and she will one day win the Oscar, but this is not her year,'' he says. ''Lost in Translation is charming and funny. There is an improvisational feel which makes it fresh, but you do slightly have the sense that she is flying by the seat of her pants.'' He feels the exact opposite about Weir's navigational skills. ''He tells the story with tremendous style, and the craftsmanship is stunning.''

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR TIM ROBBINS, MYSTIC RIVER Robbins ''is the heart and soul of that picture,'' the producer says. ''You do not see him acting.''

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS SHOHREH AGHDASHLOO, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG ''I was one of the few people who did not like Renee Zellweger's performance in Cold Mountain,'' he says. ''She is in a different movie [from her costars], with that Beverly Hillbillies accent. But she will win. She works for it, and she didn't get it for Chicago.'' To our producer, Aghdashloo was nothing short of a revelation. ''She was fantastic,'' he says. ''I've never seen her before, and given what happens to supporting-actress winners like Anna Paquin, Mira Sorvino, and Juliette Binoche, I'll probably never see her again.''

THE SCREENWRITER Though he's worked only on studio films, our screenwriter is an indie guy at heart. He calls City of God the best movie of the year and believes that the studios' failed attempt to abolish screeners caused voters to look closer at the battle-weary indies. ''Screeners help indie movies that deserve to be helped,'' he says. His picks:

BEST PICTURE THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING Our screenwriter always looks for a Best Picture that will stand the test of time. ''Lost in Translation is too small, Master and Commander too standard, Mystic River too grim, and Seabiscuit too glossy,'' he says, explaining his process of elimination. ''[Rings] feels like a movie that will never be forgotten. People aren't just awarding it for this picture but for all three.'' (Never one to split his vote, he's going with Peter Jackson for Best Director.)

BEST ACTOR SEAN PENN, MYSTIC RIVER For our screenwriter and his Academy buddies, it's a two-man race between Lost in Translation's Bill Murray and Penn. ''I liked Ben Kingsley in House of Sand and Fog, but it was so depressing I wanted to kill myself at the end,'' he says. ''Bill Murray plays a very light, deft touch of comedy, which most actors can't do, but when you are looking for power and range that role is not enough.'' Penn gets the edge for his body of work. ''If there is an actor who is deserving and has never won, you want to make sure he wins because who knows what's going to happen,'' he says, citing Jeremy Irons and Al Pacino, who haven't been nominated since their wins.

BEST ACTRESS DIANE KEATON, SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE Talk about reverse ageism. As much as he would love to recognize Keisha Castle-Hughes for Whale Rider, he feels she's too young. ''It's hard to give a 13-year-old a Best Actress win because they are probably playing themselves.'' Like Best Actor, his choice boils down to comedy versus drama, and again, he sees a close race between Keaton and Monster's Charlize Theron. ''It's a question of, do you reward somebody who plays somebody who is clearly acting [Theron], or somebody who is so good it doesn't show [Keaton]?'' he says.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY IN AMERICA, BY JIM SHERIDAN, NAOMI SHERIDAN, AND KIRSTEN SHERIDAN After seeing the movies and reading the nominated scripts, he's ''going with the feel-good tearjerker.'' His logic: ''The Barbarian Invasions is The Big Chill for 50-year-olds. Dirty Pretty Things is well-written Brit lit. Lost in Translation worked -- but somewhere the story got lost in translation to the screen. Finding Nemo is a possible winner, but I find it hard to connect to dialogue not spoken by human beings.''

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY AMERICAN SPLENDOR, BY ROBERT PULCINI AND SHARI SPRINGER BERMAN The deciding factor for him is how well the scribes elevated the material to the big screen. His three also-rans are Seabiscuit (''good enough to place but not win''), City of God (''powerful but not enough people saw it''), and Rings (''With Tolkien on one side and the special effects on the other, who knows what the screenwriters did?''). An admirer of Mystic River (''good writing; probable winner''), he's picking American Splendor. ''Studios usually take comic books and make them into stupider movies,'' he says. ''This took a comic book and made it into a movie that was even smarter.''

THE DIRECTOR While recruiting a director, we discovered a handful of prominent ones who aren't voting this year. One former winner says he doesn't believe in calling something the ''best,'' while four others simply haven't seen the movies because they were working. Three younger, big-name directors haven't even bothered to join the Academy. Still, we managed to find a veteran member of the director's branch who has some sharp opinions (''Veronica Guerin was the only movie as good as the documentaries'') and plans to vote his mind ''to knock idiotic films like Lost in Translation.'' His choices:

BEST PICTURE MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD The director is voting for the film he dislikes the least. ''We've seen this [story] before, but it's a great production and it holds together,'' he says. He doesn't like the fact that Sean Penn got away with murder in Mystic River, and he calls Seabiscuit ''a minor, drooling picture.'' Though he concedes that Rings will win for its Herculean effort, he calls it a ''mythical mishmash'' and adds that ''it's not Homer.'' But he saves his real ire for Lost in Translation: ''Like many of my friends, I detested it. Aristotle had a thing called 'catharsis': At the end of the picture something should happen. What happened? It's a picture about two losers who go home to losing situations.''

BEST DIRECTOR CLINT EASTWOOD, MYSTIC RIVER Excusing the ending, he's checking off Eastwood's name. ''The performances he got were very good, particularly Tim Robbins' and Kevin Bacon's, and Eastwood is getting better as a director.'' He dismisses Jackson for failing to put emotions into his story. ''Lord of the Rings is a wonderfully directed film about nothing,'' he says. ''The third show is almost two and a half hours of battle. There is no humanity. There is no love. There is nothing except hobbits that run around.''

BEST DOCUMENTARY CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS ''This is the strongest crop of feature documentaries ever,'' he says. He was floored by My Architect, ''a fascinating tale told with a great deal of panache,'' but the two standouts were The Fog of War (''It gets as close to the truth as someone would want you to get'') and Friedmans, which gets his vote. ''It's breathtaking in its revelations,'' he says. ''I'm tempted to use a word I never use: unbelievable.''