ACADEMY AWARDS: Finally, after the longest, dirtiest and most expensive campaign in Oscars history, the polls closed last Tuesday and the stage is set at the new Kodak Theatre in Hollywood for the 74th Academy Awards ceremony, which kicks off at 5.30 p.m. tomorrow night (1.30 a.m. on Monday, Irish time). As the dirtiest campaign in Oscar history draws to a close, Michael Dwyer gears up for a night that could garner two Oscars for the Irish
Yet, after all the smears and counter-accusations, and all the other awards which are supposed to serve as barometers for the Oscars, no one seems any wiser than they were three months ago. Rather than providing a semblance of clarity, those awards merely muddied the waters - and the tea leaves.
This year's Academy Awards are the most unpredictable in memory, and because of that, rival studios have splashed out tens of millions of dollars in relentless, ultimately mind-numbing campaigning. The big spenders have been the two movies widely regarded as the front-runners, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and A Beautiful Mind, while DreamWorks has spent a disproportionately large amount on campaigning for Shrek against arch-rival Disney's Monsters, Inc in the new category for best animated feature film.
Most of the dirt has been flying in the face of A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard's sentimental biopic of the schizophrenic, Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, John Forbes Nash Jr, played by Russell Crowe. This would-be inspirational drama, which appeared tailor-made for Oscar approval, has been accused of glossing over the messier aspects of its subject's life, including his homosexual experiences, his divorce from his wife, and his alleged anti-Semitism.
Nash even went on the prime-time US network TV show, 60 Minutes, last Sunday night to counter the allegations.
Ironically, he was interviewed by Mike Wallace, who had vented his dissatisfaction with how he himself was portrayed in another recent Oscar-nominated film starring Russell Crowe, The Insider. And there have been claims of a counter-campaign to blame other studios, discredit their Oscar nominees and transform A Beautiful Mind into a sympathy candidate.
That film's campaign was further damaged by Crowe's intemperate behaviour following his win at the BAFTA awards in London last month, when he attacked the show's producer for cutting the poem - Patrick Kavanagh's Sanctity - which Crowe read during his acceptance speech. After a flood of "Beautiful Mind, Foul Mouth" headlines, Crowe was eventually persuaded to eat crow and apologise, but the mud had stuck.
However, Crowe remains the odds-on favourite to win the Oscar, but should he lose, the beneficiary almost certainly would be Denzel Washington for Training Day, which raises this year's other major issue at the Oscars - that in the 73 years of the awards, only six black actors have won Oscars and only one of them for a leading role - Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field way back in 1963. Putting this issue into sharp focus this year is the fact that Poitier is due to receive an honorary Oscar tomorrow night at a ceremony where the presenter will be Whoopi Goldberg, another one of those six black Oscar-winning actors. And for only the second time in Oscars history, three black actors are nominated for leading roles - Halle Berry (Monster's Ball), Will Smith (Ali) and Washington.
THEN there is the Irish question. In a vintage year for Irish nominees, Enya is shortlisted with her songwriting partners, Nicky and Roma Ryan, for best original film song with May It Be, from The Fellowship of the Ring. The Florida-based production sound mixer, Peter J. Devlin, who is from Belfast, is up for best sound for Pearl Harbor.
And in a remarkable achievement, Irish films have taken two of the five nominations for best animated short film - Cathal Gaffney's Give Up Yer Auld Sins and Ruairí Robinson's Fifty Percent Grey. The Irish shorts face formidable competition from Pixar, the hi-tech US computer animation company, which is nominated for For the Birds, now on release with Monsters, Inc.
In the best song category, Enya is nominated along with Sting's Until from Kate & Leopold (the Golden Globe winner and the favourite), Paul McCartney's title song from Vanilla Sky, Diane Warren's There You'll Be from Pearl Harbor, and Randy Newman's If I Didn't Have You from Monsters, Inc.
Nevertheless, I am confident Enya will win tomorrow night, and I will stick my neck out very far indeed and predict that Give Up Yer Auld Sins will charm the voters and take an Oscar.
The Oscars cermony is live on BBC2, on Sunday night (12.45 a.m.). Edited highlights will be shown on RTÉ1 at 10.20 p.m. on Monday