Musical likely to appeal to Oscar judges in time of war

Picking the Oscar winners means picking the mood of America, writes PETER CALDER, and this year it's time to sing, dance and forget.

Predicting Oscar results is an inexact science and my dismal record in the sweepstakes at industry functions suggests I'm one of the more inexact of its practitioners.

Picking the names that will come out of the envelopes tomorrow night in Los Angeles (Monday afternoon here) means to a very large extent picking the mood of America - or more particularly of the rich, conservative, elderly and overwhelmingly white Americans who make up the list of Academy voters.

Their votes are lobbied for (bought) with a spendthrift intensity which becomes more ruthless each year. To judge by results, even if they resist the blandishments of the studios, voters are often influenced by considerations other than artistic merit.

Choices are driven by sentiment (sick or handicapped characters do well), guilt (last year belonged to the African-Americans), or an attempt to atone for past errors of judgment (can you believe Martin Scorsese's name has never been read out?).

Given that the voting has taken place this year against the background of impending war, the results are likely to be even more skew-whiff than normal.

The essentially jingoistic subtext of Scorsese's magnum opus Gangs of New York might strike a chord in an anxious nation (the tagline for domestic consumption was "Freedom was born in the streets"; tellingly, "freedom" was replaced with the presumably synonymous "America" in international marketing), but I fancy it's more likely that most will have adopted a fixed smile and ticked the box alongside the all-American song-and-dance extravaganza Chicago.

Neither film is a patch on the majestic achievement of Roman Polanski's The Pianist, but since it's plain he won't be donning his tuxedo and turning up to the ceremony (he's been wanted for 30 years for the drug-rape of an underage girl), he won't be getting the nod. The ceremony is showbiz for the showbiz and no one likes a no-show.

Scorsese, who should have picked up a best director statuette a few times already, will probably get it this year, notionally for his messy, overblown epic but really for all his other cold-shouldered pics.

But Polanski deserves it. Scorsese's film's great, bruising mess of a screenplay should sneak home, too ("Never mind the quality, feel the width" is practically an Academy motto) and that will be some compensation for writers who had to stand by and watch as studio-enforced cuts robbed the script of the coherence which was its sole virtue.

But it's in the acting categories that all hell will break loose. Nicole Kidman, Hollywood royalty, will win best actress by a lot more than a nose, but I found her work in The Hours irritating and opaque and not a patch on Meryl Streep's in the same movie.

The best female performance I saw last year was Diane Lane's tormented turn in the surprisingly good and unfairly ignored Unfaithful but you can hear the voters saying "Diane who?" from here.

I'm picking Ed Harris' disgracefully showy, almost scenery-chewing turn in The Hours will get the nod for best supporting actor; voters will feel guilty about ignoring his work in the brilliant Pollock and, even if Aids isn't the fashionable dramatic accessory it used to be, it still gives a character an edge.

Chris Cooper's beautifully nuanced performance as the orchid thief in Adaptation crowns a distinguished portfolio of performances in films such as Lone Star and American Beauty and deserves better than what it will get - the chance to be one of the year's also-rans.

Likewise, Michael Caine's work as Fowler in The Quiet American (an achingly angst-ridden performance in an otherwise indifferent film) is among the best in a long career.

But I'm inclined to think that the voters crowded into the Shrine Auditorium will be clamouring for Jack because he'll say something outrageous, grin, raise those eyebrows and everybody will stop thinking about dead Iraqi children for a few moments.