Oscar race heads into key week of critics awards
From Bob Tourtellotte

LOS ANGELES—Hollywood’s annual Oscar race heats up this week with a key group of U.S. movie awards and nominations that is expected to narrow contenders for the world’s top movie awards.
Little-seen films like “Half Nelson” with its star Ryan Gosling, “Babel” with Cate Blanchett and director Pedro Almodovar’s “Volver” starring Penelope Cruz need strong showings this week to compete with current Oscar front-runners “Dreamgirls,” “The Departed” and “Little Miss Sunshine.”
“If one movie or one performance starts winning those (critics awards) regularly, that says to Academy members, ‘we’ve got to take a look at this,”’ said Tom O’Neil, columnist for awards-watching Web site, TheEnvelope.com.
The National Board of Review, a nearly 100-year-old group of film and other professionals, on Wednesday picks its top movies. Following it are awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and New York Film Critics Circle.
After those, come nominations from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, and on December 14 the Hollywood Foreign Press Association names its widely watched Golden Globe Award nominees.
The Oscars are given out each year by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and winners for 2006’s movies will be named on February 25. Oscars bring prestige, bigger box office and greater DVD sales.
This year’s race for best-film Oscar was wide open until recent weeks when musical “Dreamgirls” and director Martin Scorsese’s box office hit, “The Departed,” a crime drama, established firm front-runner spots.
That pair is joined by quirky comedy “Little Miss Sunshine” and Britain’s “Queen Elizabeth,” about Queen Elizabeth dealing with the crisis surrounding Princess Diana’s death, as the likely contenders among the five nominees to come.
“For anybody else, it’s up for grabs,” said Pete Hammond, a film critic for Maxim magazine.
MIRREN VS. DENCH?
Oscar watchers are curious to see if “Babel,” director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s look at cultural divisions, can overcome a mixed reception among U.S. critics.
Similarly, Almodovar’s “Volver” has wowed critics but had only limited success at box offices, and Oscar voters like to see audiences turn out in theaters for its award hopefuls.
Experts said “Volver” may likely yield a best actress nomination for its star Penelope Cruz, but the Spanish beauty needs a boost this week from critics to keep her in the race.
Overall, the best actress race is more crowded than it has been in many years with Helen Mirren in “Queen Elizabeth” and Dame Judi Dench for “Notes on a Scandal” taking early front-runner status alongside Kate Winslet in the dark drama “Little Children.”
Two late entries, Sienna Miller for “Factory Girl” and Renee Zellweger for “Miss Potter,” see their films debut in late December, so they may not show up on the critics’ lists yet still compete for Oscars, the experts said.
Like Cruz, Gosling, who plays a drug addicted schoolteacher in “Half Nelson,” would get a big boost with nods from the critics. Elsewhere, the experts believe Oscar’s actor race is wide open with three actors claiming early front-runner status with slim leads, at best.
Will Smith is winning early praise for a film about a man overcoming life’s obstacles, “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Forest Whitaker has support for his turn as former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland,” and Peter O’Toole gives a top performance in a tale of an older man’s friendship with a young woman in “Venus”.