Bio picks Oscar gives its nod to lies and lives BY PETER KEOUGH
	Peter’s picks The 2004 Oscar nominations have been announced! Click here to see how Peter Keough's predictions panned out. Best Film The Aviator Finding Neverland Hotel Rwanda Million Dollar Baby Sideways Best Director Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby Marc Forster, Finding Neverland Alexander Payne, Sideways Martin Scorsese, The Aviator Zhang Yimou, House of Flying Daggers Best Actor Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland Leonardo DiCaprio, The Aviator Jamie Foxx, Ray Paul Giamatti, Sideways Best Actress Annette Bening, Being Julia Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Best Supporting Actor Thomas Haden Church, Sideways Jamie Foxx, Collateral Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby Freddie Highmore, Finding Neverland Clive Owen, Closer Best Supporting Actress Cate Blanchett, The Aviator Laura Linney, Kinsey Virginia Madsen, Sideways Sophie Okenedo, Hotel Rwanda Natalie Portman, Closer

George Bush has to be the luckiest screw-up who ever lived. Just look at the past month. A tsunami and the deaths of 200,000 people cover his ass as all order breaks down in Iraq and the administration admits that there were no WMDs. And next week, when the so-called Iraqi election collapses into a bloody fiasco, Americans will be preoccupied with the Super Bowl and the Oscar nominations.

True, the Academy’s choices sometimes reflect its discontent with the ways things are going in the real world, and no doubt a membership consisting of the bluest of the Blue is still simmering from its defeat in November. Will the choices the Academy announces this Tuesday reflect its bitterness? Hell, no. It reached its peak of protest last year with Michael Moore and Sean Penn, and that didn’t change a thing, except perhaps for the worst.

So this year, it’s back to the same old glad-handing routine of self-promotion, phony piety, and maybe even some cynical sucking up to the Red State "mandate." That might partly explain the success of a boutique film like Sideways, which has won virtually every critics’ prize, not to mention a host of Golden Globe, Director’s Guild, Writers Guild, Producer’s Guild and Screen Actor’s Guild nominations.

Here’s the story: drunken, privileged, self-pitying failure finds a new life with a worthy woman. Sound familiar? True, unlike our president, the hero of Sideways can speak in complete sentences and prefers pinot noir to Coors Light. And no doubt the pair’s politics would differ. But as was pointed out in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it’s the myth that gets printed, not the facts. So don’t be surprised when Sideways is besotted with nominations: Best Picture, Best Director for Alexander Payne, Best Actor for Paul Giamatti, Best Supporting Actor for Thomas Haden Church, and Best Supporting Actress for Virginia Madsen.

Sideways is just one exemplary life story to be rewarded by the Academy. Instead of dealing with abstractions like history, ideology, principles, injustice, and the like, Hollywood prefers to focus on the individual. Thus, we have the year of the bio-pic.

Here’s another story: The Aviator. The callow scion of a wealthy family battles vested interests to achieve his dreams and become a national leader despite a huge boondoggle at the taxpayers’ expense. True, Howard Hughes’s outsider image, unlike George W.’s, wasn’t just phony spin. And the Spruce Goose, his huge troop carrier that barely got off the ground, can’t compare in folly, deceit, and cost to the debacle in Iraq or the despoiling of Medicare and Social Security. Nonetheless, comparisons could be made between the president’s fundamentalism and Hughes’s compulsion to grow his nails and pee in milk bottles. Besides, Hollywood can’t resist a self-congratulatory epic about Hollywood, especially one as classy as this. Finally, the Academy wants to give Martin Scorsese, one of America’s best directors, another shot at losing for Best Director. So he’ll get a nod, as will The Aviator for Best Picture and Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes for Best Actor. As for Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, such a note-perfect imitation of the actress who won the most Oscars in history is a sure thing for Best Supporting Actress.

How about compassionate conservatism? Here, Hollywood has outshone the administration in the face of one of the greatest natural disasters of all time (which occurred two days before the Academy mailed out its Oscar ballots to its membership). While Bush vacationed in Crawford, Sandra Bullock shelled out a million bucks to the tsunami victims in Southeast Asia. Soon celebrities were climbing over one another with their checkbooks, a movement topped off by George Clooney’s shaming Bill O’Reilly into appearing on his star-studded benefit concert.

So why not finally acknowledge the 1994 genocide of 900,000 Tutsis? Although it hasn’t been a big winner of awards to date (a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture and SAG nominations for Best Actor for Don Cheadle and Best Supporting Actress for Sophie Okenedo), I think recent events might encourage the Academy to lay down the red carpet for Hotel Rwanda. It should get a Best Picture nomination, Best Actor for Don Cheadle as the resourceful and courageous hotel manager who saved more than a thousand lives, and Best Supporting Actress for Okenedo as his long-suffering wife.

As for other liberal causes, Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake, a cheerily grim melodrama about your friendly neighborhood abortionist, might be too edgy despite its wishy-washy attitude toward the subject. Imelda Staunton, the critics’ darling and a SAG and Golden Globe nominee, should, however, get a Best Actress nomination because in the end she cries about what she’s done.

But leave it to the only Republican in the bunch, Clint Eastwood, to make a film taking an unambiguous stand on one of the issues dear to the liberal agenda. (To reveal what would give away too much about the movie.) Million Dollar Baby has cleaned up awards from all of Hollywood’s guilds and the Golden Globes and even got top spot from the National Society of Film Critics (traditionally a sign that a picture is doomed with the Academy). Hilary Swank is terrific as the boxer, Eastwood is sly but powerful as her crusty manager, and Morgan Freeman is as subtle and humane as he was in Unforgiven. The picture and all the above should be nominated, including Clint for Best Director.

Timid though it might be, the Academy won’t escape castigation from those scolds who see it as the sinkhole of depravity. For not only has this been the year of the bio-pic in movies, it’s also been the year of the pedophile — alleged, suspected, or imagined. Could this weird trend be some kind of retort to the priest-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church? I scratch my head, but the evidence is there: The Woodsman, Finding Neverland, and Kinsey. All have gotten kudos from critics’ organizations, the guilds, and the Globes. Which will the Oscars embrace and why?

At first glance, Kinsey would seem the favorite. Here’s the guy who pretty much gave Hollywood the go-ahead to merchandize the nasty with his groundbreaking volumes on male and female sexual behavior in 1948 and 1953. Plus, he was a little kinky himself — though accusations that he committed or abetted child molestation, most coming from right-wing groups, have been discredited by every reliable source. But he was bi-sexual, and I think Hollywood is as skittish as the Democrats about what those exit polls from the election seemed to say. Hollywood doesn’t want people exiting from its movies as well. So I think that Kinsey and Liam Neeson’s great performance will be passed over. Not so Laura Linney as Best Supporting Actress: there’s always room in that category for another long-suffering wife.

Perhaps the least likely pedophile movie to get any recognition is the only one about a bona fide, if fictitious, pedophile. Despite Kevin Bacon’s admirable performance as the convicted child molester trying to adjust to society after being released to society in Nicole Kassell’s debut feature, The Woodsman, and even though his character tries to beat his habit, the film will be taken to the woodshed come Oscar night.

Which leaves Finding Neverland — if it doesn’t get a Best Picture nomination, it should at any rate win the Karl Rove Award for concealing and ignoring blatant truths. James Barrie, author of Peter Pan, was a five-foot-tall homunculus who never developed beyond the age of 13 and who spent his life playing with little boys. Who should you cast in the role? Why, Johnny Depp, of course: give him a Best Actor nomination. And give a Best Director nod to Marc Forster: he got Halle Berry an Oscar for gratuitous sex in Monster’s Ball, and here he shows he’s equally adept at gratuitous non-sex. Neither should we forget Freddie Highmore, who plays the little boy who inspired Peter Pan, for Best Supporting Actor. Far from evoking the sinister Neverland of Michael Jackson’s dementia, this film conjures the even more fanciful Neverland of America today, where, as Peter Pan and George Bush insist, you just gotta believe.

But wait — doesn’t everybody love Ray? Doesn’t that bio-pic belong in the Best Picture category too? Probably, but my cynical feeling is that with Hotel Rwanda, the black Best Picture quota will be filled. Jamie Foxx, however, will get a Best Actor nomination, if only because he deserves it. (He’ll get a Best Supporting Actor nod for Collateral for good measure.)

So what remains? Oh: Best Actress. Have you noticed in recent years how few Best Picture nominations have nominees for Best Actress? What does that tell you? Anyway, joining Swank and Staunton in this category will be Kate Winslet for Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (which should be a Best Picture nomination), Catalina Sandino Moreno for María, llena eres de gracia/María Full of Grace (which could be a Best Picture nominee) and Annette Bening for Being Julia (which shouldn’t).

Then, of course, there is sex. After the absurdities of the Janet Jackson imbroglio and all its censorious fallout, shouldn’t the Oscars pay some lip service to freedom of expression? So let’s give the last two supporting spots to two actors from Mike Nichols’s talky, creaky Closer: Clive Owen for almost making a movie out of pretentious piffle and Natalie Portman for talking dirty and, to the ecstasy of Star Wars fan boys everywhere, showing a little skin.

One nomination, for Best Director, remains. I know I should give it to Nichols for Closer or to Taylor Hackford for Ray. But I’ll give it instead to Zhang Yimou for the best movie of the year, House of Flying Daggers. It makes you believe in the future of movies even when the future of everything else appears in doubt.