Oscar bait: an early forecast

If the Oscars were to be held right now, the Motion Picture Academy would have to call them off. It’s been a dismal year at the box office — and for award-worthy performances and films as well.

Aside from the boxing drama “Cinderella Man,” the character-driven “Crash” and the political thriller “The Constant Gardener,” there’s very little out there that looks like traditional Oscar bait. “The Interpreter” may have appeared to be a contender for a few weeks, and even “Batman Begins” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” had their champions, but they’re widely regarded as popcorn pictures.

Fortunately, the Oscars won’t be handed out until March 5, 2006. The burden is on the fall lineup to provide the missing contestants.

Last year, all five of the best picture nominees were released after Labor Day. The big winner, Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby,” didn’t even appear to be in the running until around Thanksgiving, when advance screenings began to create a momentum that proved unstoppable.

Something similar could happen with Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s “Munich,” which has a huge subject (terrorism at the 1972 Munich Olympics), a remarkable cast (Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Geoffrey Rush, Mathieu Kassovitz) and an official Dec. 23 release date. It’s still in production.

Can Spielberg finish in time? Even Eastwood, who brought “Baby” in close to the wire, allowed himself more time in the editing room.

Following in ‘Chicago’s’ dancing footsteps
If Spielberg does pull it off, he may find himself competing with the movie versions of two long-running stage musicals: “Rent,” starring Taye Diggs and other members of the original Broadway cast, and “The Producers,” with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick repeating their Broadway roles as theatrical con artists who set out to create the world’s most tasteless musical. Still, not all stage musicals click on film; for every “Chicago” there’s a “Phantom of the Opera” (or two or three).

Slideshow   Celebrity sightings Meg Ryan and Cheryl Hines get “Serious,” Paris Hilton plays Santa, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie take Maddox to the movies and more. more photos

Woody Allen’s “Match Point,” starring Scarlett Johansson as an American femme fatale in London, was so well-received at the Cannes Film Festival that it could become his first film in two decades to earn a best-picture nomination. Another Cannes smash, Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers,” won the festival’s Grand Prix, and it could earn further recognition for Jarmusch (previously ignored by the Oscar voters) and his stars, Bill Murray and Jessica Lange.

Terrence Malick is back with “The New World,” an epic about Pocahontas and explorer John Smith. Cameron Crowe, an Oscar winner (for the script of “Almost Famous”) returns with a new romance, “Elizabethtown,” that connects Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. Also back in the director’s chair are Curtis Hanson (“In Her Shoes”) and David Cronenberg (“A History of Violence”).

Books on film
Literary adaptations usually do well at the Oscars. Due before Christmas are new versions of “Oliver Twist,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” plus the fourth installment in the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” Michael Winterbottom has taken on the considerable challenge of filming Laurence Sterne’s experimental 1761 novel, “Tristram Shandy,” starring Steve Coogan and Gillian Anderson.

“Chicago’s” director, Rob Marshall, will be back with an adaptation of Arthur Golden’s romantic epic, “Memoirs of a Geisha,” starring Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe and Gong Li. It’s due in mid-December, and so are a couple of blockbuster remakes: Peter Jackson’s “King Kong,” with Adrien Brody, Jack Black and Naomi Watts as the screamer heroine, and Steve Zaillian’s adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men,” with Sean Penn in the Huey Long-like role that won a 1949 Oscar for Broderick Crawford.

The movie may put Penn in the running again for best actor. For competition, there’s a long list of usual suspects: Ralph Fiennes (“The Constant Gardener”), Russell Crowe (“Cinderella Man”), Joaquin Phoenix (as Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line”), Kevin Costner (“The Upside of Anger”) and Jamie Foxx (from Sam Mendes’ Gulf War drama, “Jarhead”).

Jake Gyllenhaal, who co-stars with Foxx in “Jarhead,” could earn his first nomination for that film or for Ang Lee’s gay-cowboy drama, “Brokeback Mountain,” in which he plays Heath Ledger’s lover. This could also be the year of Oscar recognition for Paul Giamatti (“Cinderella Man”) and/or Peter Saarsgard, another “Jarhead” cast member, who gave a mesmerizing performance as a depressed writer in “The Dying Gaul.”

Others who could score first-time nominations include David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in “Good Night. And, Good Luck” and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in “Capote.” Terrence Howard made a big impression in two high-profile pictures: “Crash” and “Hustle & Flow.” His performance in the former may be supporting, but then that applies to all the actors in “Crash,” which could land supporting nominations for Thandie Newton, Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle and/or Sandra Bullock.

MORE FROM MOVIE OPINIONS

Can word-of-mouth sell ‘The Road’?

Can word-of-mouth sell ‘The Road’? ‘Princess’ avoids the elephant in the room Oscar season nears, but where’s the buzz? Hollywood’s vampire obsession may bleed out Does ‘Precious’ stereotype big black women? Newsweek: The problem with ‘Precious’ When it comes to stardom, Clooney has smarts ‘Saw’ franchise creates buzz, but is it any good? Remembering concert documentaries that rock theGrio: ‘This Is It’ a final act fit for a king   Add Movie opinions headlines to your news reader: