YES, it’s true: “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” is the picture to beat at this year’s Oscars.
Shown to the press this week in advance of its Dec. 17 opening, the 31/2-hour “Rings” exceeds its huge expectations with a more cleanly told, emotionally involving and better-acted story than its Oscar-nominated predecessors’; awesome, sweeping battle scenes; and sheer visual grandeur that could blow away the competition.
But while “King” will likely equal or exceed the 12 nominations captured by the first “Rings” (which won in four technical categories), New Line Cinema and the film’s producers, including its Kiwi genius director, Peter Jackson, shouldn’t begin clearing space on their mantels just yet.
“King” will still need to overcome a certain sense of déjà vu as well as the academy’s historic resistance to fantasy/sci-fi films – “Star Wars,” “E.T.” and “The Wizard of Oz” were all nominated for Best Picture and lost.
The Tolkien epic also will face the strongest field of competitors so far this century, led by Miramax’s sublimely poetic “Cold Mountain” (opening Dec. 25), the last of the serious challengers to be screened for the press, also this week.
We know going in that this Civil War-era epic was loaded with Oscar pedigree. It’s based on an award-winning best seller, is directed by Anthony Mingella (“The English Patient”) and stars recent Oscar winner Nicole Kidman as well as past nominees Jude Law and Renée Zellweger.
But unlike Miramax’s grim period epic of last Christmas, “Gangs of New York” (which scored 10 nominations, including Best Picture, and won none), “Cold Mountain” is a gripping triumph of intelligent storytelling and filmcraft, directed and acted with enormous skill, power and assurance.
Beyond these two locks for Best Picture nominations, the field gets somewhat murky.
There are two more pricey period epics in contention, but veteran Oscar watchers are betting that only one of them will make the cut, since the Best Picture nominations generally contain several types of pictures.
Peter Weir’s high-seas adventure, “Master and Commander” (distributed domestically by Fox), looked like a sure thing and got some of the year’s best reviews, but experts say it could be scuttled by its box-office performance, which has been relatively disappointing, given its enormous cost.
If “Master” falters, its spot would likely go to another 19th-century saga, set in Japan – Edward Zwick and Warner Bros.’ “The Last Samurai,” opening tomorrow, which is perceived as much more of a crowd pleaser and should do huge business, thanks to star Tom Cruise.
The conventional wisdom is that three grim “serious” pictures with superb performances focusing on guilt, death and redemption are locked in mortal combat for the fourth slot.
At the moment, this belongs to Clint Eastwood and Warner, whose “Mystic River” has been riding excellent reviews.
But it’s believed to be vulnerable if the critics’ groups decide to line up instead behind Alejandro Gonzalez Innarritu’s “21 Grams” from Focus Features, or possibly even newcomer Vadim Perelman’s “House of Sand and Fog,” coming Dec. 19 from DreamWorks.
The fifth position, the thinking goes, will be devoted to a smaller, “warm and fuzzy” movie.
The strongest candidate at this point appears to be Jim Sheridan’s strongly reviewed “In America,” which afforded Fox Searchlight a rare opportunity to spend an entire year mapping an ambitious (for Searchlight) Oscar campaign.
But Universal has been lavishing far more on the summer hit “Seabiscuit,” which has a literary pedigree in the best seller by Laura Hillebrand, a subject matter dear to Hollywood’s heart (horse racing) and is said to be playing extremely well at awards screenings.
It just might sneak in by a nose. Stay tuned.
