Hollywood spruces up for Oscar night

LOS ANGELES - Hollywood is sprucing up for its most glamorous night of the year, the Oscars, with stars picking gowns, pundits laying odds on best films and television executives worrying about whether new host Chris Rock's comedy will be too raw.

Among the movies vying for the awards given on Sunday by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are director Clint Eastwood's saga of boxing and human friendship, "Million Dollar Baby," and Martin Scorsese's biography of billionaire eccentric Howard Hughes, "The Aviator."

For weeks, as Hollywood's awards season has run up to the Oscars, the battle between the two films has been as tight as any race of recent years. But some experts now think that "Baby" has the edge over "The Aviator."

Professional guilds have split their awards, while critics' groups have favored wine country comedy "Sideways." The other challengers for top film, Ray Charles biography "Ray" and drama "Finding Neverland," about the creation of "Peter Pan," have failed to generate Oscar heat.

"There's no doubt it will be 'Million Dollar Baby. If it has competition, it is from 'Aviator,' but 'Sideways' is out," said veteran film critic Emanuel Levy.

In the best actor race, Jamie Foxx's portrayal of Charles in "Ray" seems a shoo-in after he swept early awards from the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe voters. He faces stiff competition from another Golden Globe winner, Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Hughes in "The Aviator" as he begins to slip into madness.

Among best actress nominees, Hilary Swank as a female boxer in "Million Dollar Baby" is in the night's tightest bout against Annette Bening and her portrayal of an aging stage diva in "Being Julia."

WHAT TO WEAR?

TV audiences and Oscar show producer Gil Cates will be watching to see whether host Rock, known for his raw onstage language, will upset TV regulators worried about obscenity after singer Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at last year's football Super Bowl.

"Chris is a very smart man, and he understands quite clearly the difference between the scatological observations he can make on his cable television specials and how to be funny within the boundaries allowed on the networks," Cates wrote in a Web log at oscar.com.

The Oscar telecast will be broadcast on the ABC network.

The big question for the world's fashionistas will be what the stars are wearing on the red carpet outside Hollywood's Kodak Theater. Celebrities will sparkle and shine in gowns and tuxedos from designers such as Valentino, Carolina Herrera, Calvin Klein and Vera Wang.

"The overriding trend (in gowns) calls for silhouettes, cut close to the body. ... The stars are going for simple shapes, and the drama will be in the color of the dresses," said People magazine beauty editor Eleni Gage.

One Gage tip: black is out; pastels are in.

At Tinseltown's toniest hotels, stars were treated to dresses, diamonds and cosmetics from merchants like Kwiat, Revlon and M*A*C. Britain's Soho House hotels has a stylish "Oscar Villa" high in the Hollywood Hills, where stars like Demi Moore and Tyra Banks have gone to relax.

Hollywood geared up for celebrity-filled parties thrown by the likes of Elton John and Vanity Fair magazine, and amid all the happenings comes the Miramax Films gala for "The Aviator" and "Finding Neverland."

It may be the final hurrah at Miramax for Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob Weinstein, backers of past best Oscar winners "The English Patient," "Shakespeare in Love," and "Chicago."

The pair are expected to leave the company they founded shortly after this year's Oscars - a bittersweet ending to the Weinsteins real-life Hollywood story.

- REUTERS