Mar 23, 2003 11 min read

If it wins, “Chicago” would be the first musical since 1968’s “Oliver!” to take the best-picture prize. Long out of favor in Hollywood, the musical began re-emerging with “Moulin Rouge,” a best-picture nominee for 2001. “Chicago” is adapted from the Bob Fosse stage hit about two jailed Jazz Age murderesses competing for tabloid fame.

The uplifting spirit of musicals historically helped Americans through the Depression, World War II and other hard times. The nation’s brooding over terrorist threats and possible war in Iraq may have primed audiences for a new wave of song-and-dance flicks.

“It is probably where we are as a society right now,” said “Chicago” director Rob Marshall. “I certainly would like to go to the theater to be lifted. I think we all do. Even though “Chicago’ is a cynical, dark satire, I do think there’s a great deal of joy in the piece, as well. Musicals can lift you in ways that non-musicals can’t.”

While “Chicago” has the inside track for best picture, some Oscar analysts feel the “The Hours” and “The Pianist” have a shot among academy voters, who often go for such sober dramas.

“The Hours” is adapted from Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel focusing on three women: Disconsolate author Virginia Woolf as she begins her novel “Mrs. Dalloway” in the 1920s, a suicidal 1950s housewife who is reading Woolf’s book, and a troubled modern woman who serves as an incarnation of Clarissa Dalloway.

“The Pianist” is based on the memoir of Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish musician in Poland who managed to hide from the Nazis for years in the Warsaw ghetto. The harrowing film biography was directed by Roman Polanski, a Holocaust survivor himself.

The vengeance epic “Gangs of New York,” set on the mean streets of lower Manhattan during the Civil War, looks like a longshot for best picture. “Gangs” has the sweeping historical scope that often grabs academy members, but reaction to the film has been too mixed.

Likewise, “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” _ the middle chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy adventure _ is a longshot. Though exceeding its predecessor, “The Fellowship of the Ring,” at the box office, “The Two Towers” earned just six Oscar nominations, compared to 13 for “Fellowship.” The trilogy’s best hope for the top Oscar may be the final installment, “The Return of the King,” due out in December.

Best Actor

Four nominees already have at least one Oscar: Nicolas Cage (“Adaptation”), Michael Caine (“The Quiet American”), Daniel Day-Lewis (“Gangs of New York”) and Jack Nicholson (“About Schmidt”). The newcomer is Adrien Brody, star of “The Pianist.”

Nicholson and Day-Lewis appear to be the front-runners, though there’s considerable new-kid-on-the-block sentiment for Brody.

For 12-time nominee Nicholson, it would be his fourth Oscar, tying Katharine Hepburn for most acting awards. Flamboyant roles earned Nicholson his previous Oscars, the lead-actor prizes for 1975’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and 1997’s “As Good As It Gets” and the supporting-actor honor for 1983’s “Terms of Endearment.”

In “About Schmidt,” Nicholson is uncharacteristically drab and dwarfish as a retired insurance man re-examining his meager accomplishments after his wife’s death.

Day-Lewis previously won the best-actor Oscar for 1989’s “My Left Foot” and was nominated for 1993’s “In the Name of the Father.” He was lured out of a five-year acting hiatus since 1997’s “The Boxer” to play a garishly wicked crime boss in “Gangs of New York.”

“I never lost my joy in (acting),” Day-Lewis said of his time off from movies. “It’s just that I don’t do it very often. But when I do do it, I love what I do.”

The role earned Day-Lewis the best-actor honor from the Screen Actors Guild, which boosts his Oscar prospects.

Brody earned his first Oscar nomination for playing Szpilman in “The Pianist.” In his 15-year career, Brody has focused on provocative films over commercial ones, such as Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line,” Spike Lee’s “Summer of Sam” and Steven Soderbergh’s “King of the Hill.”

Already lean at 160 pounds, the 6-foot-1 Brody shed 30 pounds in six weeks to capture Szpilman’s gauntness after years of deprivation in the Warsaw ghetto.

Cage’s only other nomination earned him the best-actor Oscar for 1995’s “Leaving Las Vegas.” His dual-role performance in “Adaptation” generally is considered his best work in the seven years since, when Cage focused heavily on action movies and other commercial flicks.

In “Adaptation,” Cage plays a fictionalized version of “Being John Malkovich” screenwriter Charlie Kaufman as he struggles to adapt Susan Orlean’s book “The Orchid Thief” for film. Kaufman wound up writing himself into the script, along with a fictional twin brother whom Cage also plays.

Caine received his sixth Oscar nomination for “The Quiet American,” playing a British journalist in an adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel about intrigue, murder and romance in 1950s Vietnam.

His two Oscar wins came for supporting actor, for 1986’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” and 1999’s “The Cider House Rules.”

Best Actress

A first-time winner is guaranteed to walk away with the Oscar here, and the smart money is on Nicole Kidman for “The Hours.” Her stiffest competition comes from Renee Zellweger for “Chicago” and Julianne Moore for “Far From Heaven,” with Salma Hayek of “Frida” and Diane Lane of “Unfaithful” just along for the ride.

Kidman earned her first nomination last year for “Moulin Rouge,” and an Oscar for “The Hours” would be a real-life Hollywood ending after the media circus over her divorce from Tom Cruise.

For years, Kidman had earned acclaim in such movies as “Flirting” and “To Die For” but always remained in Cruise’s shadow. After their breakup, Kidman’s career took off with “Moulin Rouge” and the horror hit “The Others.”

With “The Hours,” Kidman hid behind a fake nose and melancholy demeanor to capture the plain, gloomy appearance of author Woolf.

“I was worried the nose would be a distraction, that people would laugh,” Kidman said. “I look at it now and think, it could have been a disaster walking around with this thing on my face, and nobody believing it. I’m relieved that it worked.”

Zellweger raised her Oscar chances with a best-actress win from the Screen Actors Guild. Like Kidman, Zellweger earned her first nomination last year with “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”

In “Chicago,” Zellweger plays a scheming moll who goes from wallflower stage wannabe to headline-grabbing glamor girl after she’s jailed for gunning down her lover.

Previously nominated for supporting actress with 1997’s “Boogie Nights” and lead actress with 1999’s “The End of the Affair,” Moore grabbed two nominations this time for playing two very different 1950s housewives.

“Far From Heaven,” a throwback to the ’50s melodramas of Douglas Sirk, brought Moore a best-actress nomination as a wife whose picture-perfect domestic life crumbles after her husband begins an affair with another man and she has a dalliance with her black gardener. Moore earned a supporting-actress nomination as the despairing ’50s wife in “The Hours.”

Hayek and Lane are first-time nominees. In “Frida,” Hayek plays the spirited Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, a labor of love for the Hispanic actress, who worked for years to bring the story to the screen. Hayek shared producing credit on “Frida.”

In “Unfaithful,” Lane plays an adulterous wife whose affair with a younger Frenchman leads her husband to a crime of jealous passion. Lane’s nomination is especially noteworthy since it came for a modest box-office success released early in the year. Oscar nominations tend to favor movies released toward year’s end.

Best Supporting Actor

This category probably comes down to a couple of guys named Chris. Many Oscar watchers expect Chris Cooper to win for “Adaptation,” while past winner Christopher Walken of “Catch Me If You Can” has great support and received the Screen Actors Guild prize for supporting actor.

First-time nominee Cooper plays a fictionalized version of “Orchid Thief” author Orlean’s title character in “Adaptation.” As the toothless flower poacher, character actor Cooper gives one of his most memorable performances in a career that includes such notable films as “American Beauty,” “Lone Star” and “October Sky.”

Walken’s previous nomination brought him the supporting-actor Oscar for 1978’s “The Deer Hunter.” In “Catch Me If You Can,” Walken plays the jaunty father of a master con man, managing to overshadow Oscar darling Tom Hanks, who had a larger supporting role in the same film.

There’s great affection among academy voters for first-time nominee John C. Reilly, who had a breakout year as a cuckolded husband in “Chicago,” plus supporting roles in best-picture nominees “Gangs of New York” and “The Hours.”

With “Road to Perdition,” Paul Newman earned his ninth nomination, gracefully playing a Depression-era crime boss torn between his own flawed offspring and an honorable surrogate son. Newman won the best-actor Oscar for 1986’s “The Color of Money” and received honorary Academy Awards for lifetime achievement and for humanitarian efforts.

As a writer dying of AIDS in “The Hours,” Ed Harris grabbed his fourth nomination. Harris previously had supporting-actor nominations for 1995’s “Apollo 13” and 1998’s “The Truman Show” and a lead-actor nomination for 2000’s “Pollock,” which he also directed.

Best Supporting Actress

This arguably is the most competitive acting category, with strong performances from past winners and nominees and two newcomers.

The first-time nominees both hail from “Chicago”: Catherine Zeta-Jones as a vaudeville scamp trying to capitalize on her celebrity after killing her hubby and sister, and Queen Latifah as an opportunistic jailer cashing in on the notoriety of her charges.

Zeta-Jones’ supporting-actress win at the Screen Actors Guild awards lifted her prospects to take home the Oscar.

As a fictionalized variation of author Orlean in “Adaptation,” two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep scored a record 13th nomination, passing Hepburn as the all-time champ. Streep won the supporting-actress Oscar for 1979’s “Kramer vs. Kramer” and the best-actress Oscar for 1982’s “Sophie’s Choice.”

“About Schmidt” brought Kathy Bates her third nomination, as the salty prospective mother-in-law of Nicholson’s daughter. Bates won the best-actress Oscar for 1990’s “Misery” and earned a supporting-actress nomination for 1998’s “Primary Colors.”

Then there’s Julianne Moore, nominated for playing the Woolf-fixated ’50s mother in “The Hours.” With her dual nominations in categories loaded with top-notch performances, the four-time Oscar contender has joked that she could go home a “two-time loser” just in one night.

Best Director

Two theories come into play here, one that would hand the trophy to first-time director Rob Marshall for “Chicago,” the other that would give it to veteran Martin Scorsese for “Gangs of New York.”

Marshall won the prize from the Directors Guild of America. Only five times in the 55-year history of the guild award has the winner there failed to take home the best-director Oscar.

Scorsese’s “Gangs” is considered inferior to his best work. Surprisingly, Scorsese has been nominated for best director three times previously _ for 1980’s “Raging Bull,” 1988’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” and 1990’s “GoodFellas” _ but never won an Oscar. Enough academy voters could be in lifetime-achievement mode to give Scorsese a statue.

Longshots for best-director are Stephen Daldry for “The Hours” and Pedro Almodovar for the Spanish-language tale “Talk to Her.” Daldry earned a previous directing nomination for 2000’s “Billy Elliot.” First-time directing nominee Almodovar made the 1999 Oscar winner for foreign-language film, “All About My Mother.”

Nominated in the directing category twice before, for 1974’s “Chinatown” and 1980’s “Tess,” Roman Polanski has some lifetime-achievement momentum for “The Pianist.” His exile from the United States, from which he fled in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, also provokes strong sentiments among Oscar voters, some feeling the crime should not be forgiven, others saying Polanski has suffered long enough.

Polanski, now living in Paris, would face arrest if he entered the country to attend the Oscars.

“What’s important is to differentiate all this nonsense and focus on the achievement of making a film like this, and what Roman has given us with a film like this,” said Brody, star of “The Pianist.” “Nothing should distract people from the purity of that.”

AP-ES-03-17-03 1608EST