By Gollum, we'd better win something ... or next year

RUSSELL BAILLIE ponders why 'The Two Towers' won't set the Oscars alight this year.

Yes, we wuz robbed last year and this year we've already been left out in the cold. "We" meaning that great collective of New Zealand Lord of the Rings fans, who, during last year's awards, saw the first film in the trilogy pick up four awards in the technical and musical categories but lose out in the major categories, despite 13 nominations.

This year The Two Towers has six nods, including best picture. But, curiously, Peter Jackson is the only director for a best picture nominee not nominated as best director. His second film is also up for best art direction, editing, sound, sound editing and visual effects - which it should win care of Gollum versus the shoddy digital effects in competitors Spider-Man and Attack of the Clones.

And aside from its snubs in the directing and screenplay categories, the oddest nomination it missed this year was best makeup - one of the categories which Weta Workshop's Richard Taylor and his cohorts brought home last year.

Oh well. Next year, they say. And with the Oscars shifting a month earlier next year, Academy voters might opt for rewarding LOTR as a whole - which is already an artistic and commercial triumph - as the studios struggle to roll out their traditional Oscar-eating monsters on time.

But in the visual/technical categories, it may have some heavy competition from the two Matrix films that will arrive before the end of the year.

Of this year's crop ... what year is it? Chicago may be fun but it's a relic of 70s Broadway and Hollywood.

So, too, are nominees Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Christopher Walken, and Martin Scorsese who all made better films back then than the ones they are nominated for. Especially Scorsese - with Gangs of New York America's greatest director has delivered the worst Best Picture nominee in quite some time.

Of the actors likely to be applauding Nicholson on Monday, sympathy should go to Nicolas Cage (who did twice the work in his brilliant Adaptation double role) and Michael Caine (who was great in The Quiet American, but the film's view of America's foreign policy made its backers nervous enough to botch its release).

Of the actresses, Nicole Kidman would seem the safe bet for best actress, even if she spent only a supporting role amount of time in that nose in The Hours.

As for that old complaint about the lack of good film roles for women - it's been fixed - Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep are dividing them between them.