Hollywood ready for its Oscar close-up

LOS ANGELES - The champagne is on ice, the limousines have been rented and the battle over what you can and cannot say to a massive worldwide audience has begun: Hollywood is now ready for its big night -- the Oscars.

New Zealand film-maker Taika Waititi, 28, is nominated for his first film, One Car, Two Nights, in the short live-action film category.

Shrek 2 director Andrew Adamson is the other New Zealand hope for an Oscar this year.

After months of preparation, Oscar film campaigns that cost millions and weeks of conspicuous consumption as designers and jewellers wooed -- and in some cases paid -- stars to wear their clothes and diamonds, only three major mysteries remained:

-- Would the 5800 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences make Clint Eastwood's day by giving the 74-year-old actor and director the best picture Oscar for the gut-wrenching boxing drama Million Dollar Baby?

-- Would the academy finally give a gold statuette to Martin Scorsese, one of the country's most accomplished directors, for The Aviator? He's been nominated four times for directing and twice for writing but never won.

-- And would edgy first-time host Chris Rock bomb or blast off with ABC, the US network televising the show? ABC has a five-second time delay and will bleep anything it deems too raunchy.

The fight over what can and cannot be said on the awards programme has already begun and instead of involving Rock, it involved yet another comedian whose material borders on the outrageous and politically incorrect.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that executives at ABC forced comedian Robin Williams to drop a song in which he lampooned a conservative group that criticised cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants for appearing in a video that the group called "pro-homosexual".

Williams, who is introducing the best animated film category, wanted to do a song that included the dark underside of other cartoon characters including saying, "Fred Flintstone is dyslexic, Jessica Rabbit is really a man, Olive Oyl is really anorexic and Casper is in the Ku Klux Klan".

But ABC objected to some of the sexual references in the song including "Bug Bunny is a sexaholic," the Times said.

The paper quoted Williams as saying, "They're afraid of saying Olive Oyl is anorexic. It tells you about the state of humour. It's strange to think: how afraid are you? "

With the 2-1/2 hour show losing viewers in the United States, producer Gil Cates brought Rock in and made several changes to make the show move quicker.

For some categories all nominees will be introduced on stage together, with the winner stepping forward. In others, the winner will be announced from the theatre aisles.

While the stars gather inside the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, they will be protected by a small army of police, a system to detect sarin nerve gas, a state-of-the-art command centre and roadblocks to stop bomb-laden trucks.

"We are pulling out all the stops," said John Miller, chief of counterterrorism at the Los Angeles police department.

The show is "a symbol of American culture and has the potential to be a high-visibility target," he told Reuters on the eve of the 77th Oscar ceremony.

Commentators joke that the last major security breach at the Oscars took place in 1974 when a streaker ran across the stage as David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor.

But protecting the annual event has become a serious business since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In another eve-of-the-Oscars awards show, US president George W Bush won the Razzie worst actor award for his performance in Fahrenheit 9/11.

But his moment in Hollywood's dubious spotlight was eclipsed by Halle Berry, who actually turned up to receive her worst actress accolade from the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation for her performance in Catwoman.

She thanked everyone involved in Catwoman, a film she said took her from the top of her profession to the bottom.

"I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit," she said as she dragged her agent on stage and warned him "next time read the script first".

Sideways, the wine country buddy comedy that is nominated for five Academy awards, swept the Independent Spirit Awards, the art-house world's equivalent of the Oscars, on Saturday.

The saga won all six categories in which it was nominated, including best feature, director, screenplay and male lead.

Watching the Oscars

The 77th annual Academy Awards ceremony starts on Sky Movies 1 at 2.30pm today and runs until 6.30pm.

The short film category is expected around 4pm.

A replay runs on TV2 at 10.30pm.

- REUTERS