Chicago will be talk of town at Academy Awards, film historian says

While members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences obviously wished to honor "smaller films with fewer actors" in this year's Academy Award nominations, the group ensemble film Chicago should win Best Picture partly because of its popularity, according to Don Staples.

Staples, a UNT professor of radio, television and film and a well-known film historian, has predicted Oscar winners with 85 percent accuracy for the past 33 years. The 2002 Academy Awards winners will be announced March 23, with the ceremony televised by ABC.

Staples' skill in predicting Oscar winners is a combination of gut feelings, his Hollywood connections and background, and setting his own personal preferences aside. Staples is a former president of the Society for Cinema Studies and received critical acclaim for his book, American Cinema.

Chicago won a Golden Globe Award in January for Best Musical or Comedy. As of March 3, the film had made $104.9 million at the box office after 10 weeks in release.

Staples points out that although the Golden Globes do not predict Academy Award winners, "the academy rewards popularity."

The other popular film nominated for Best Picture, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, grossed more than $330.3 million in 11 weeks of wide release. Staples says the film may be the academy's second choice for Best Picture.

"However, the first film in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, received 13 Oscar nominations last year, while The Two Towers has only six nominations," Staples says. "The academy may have had its fill of the trilogy last year, or it may be waiting to honor the last film, The Return of the King, next year."

Except for The Two Towers, all of the nominees for Best Picture — Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Hours and The Pianist — show the academy's preference this year for "films that deal with contemporary — 20th- and 21st-century — human situations," Staples says.

"I would argue that Gangs of New York was a film that made you think beyond 1860s New York. It had echoes of the Vietnam War," he says.

Though Chicago should win Best Picture, Staples predicts that its director, Rob Marshall, won't win Best Director.

"Chicago is his first film, and the academy doesn't honor someone the first time around," he says. "Ron Howard and Stephen Spielberg both had to stick around a long time before they received their first Oscars."

Three other directors nominated for the award — Stephen Daldry, director of The Hours; Pedro Almodovar, director of Talk to Her; and Roman Polanski, director of The Pianist, are considered Hollywood outsiders to the academy because they are still relatively unknown or are from other nations, "and Hollywood leans toward honoring its own," Staples says.

He predicts the academy will instead honor Gangs of New York by giving the Best Director award to the film's director, Martin Scorsese.

"He's been around awhile and has truly helped the industry and the Best Director category," Staples says.

Academy voters may believe that Scorsese, who was previously nominated but has never won, is due for an Academy Award.

The same feeling will probably result in Nicole Kidman winning Best Actress for her performance as novelist Virginia Woolf in The Hours, Staples says.

"She gives an incredible performance. This film has two other leading actresses (Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore), but Nicole Kidman comes through with a character performance that doesn't rely on her beauty," he says. "She also has rebound action from being nominated last year for Moulin Rouge. Not winning last year will help her chances this year."

Staples points out that it's not uncommon for academy voters to give an award to an actor or actress whom they believe is due for an Academy Award — regardless of the quality of the film.

"Elizabeth Taylor really should have won Best Actress for Raintree County in 1957. She was also nominated for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1958 and Suddenly Last Summer in 1959. Instead, she won for her role in Butterfield 8 — a not-so-great film — in 1960," he says.

And although Nicole Kidman is Australian, she is no longer thought of as a Hollywood outsider, Staples adds.

"In the first part of her career, she was closely tied to her husband Tom Cruise, but she has proven she can do just fine without him. Hollywood may reward her for that," he says.

Hollywood will also reward Jack Nicholson by giving him the Best Actor Oscar for About Schmidt, Staples predicts. Though Nicholson previously won two Best Supporting Actor awards for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Terms of Endearment and Best Actor for As Good As It Gets, and has been nominated a total of 12 times, that shouldn't hurt his chances this year, Staples says.

"Again, Hollywood leans toward its own. Adrien Brody in The Pianist did an incredible acting job and was on screen almost all of the film, but too few people saw the film, and he's still a relative unknown," he says.

He predicts Nicholson's co-star in About Schmidt, Kathy Bates, will win Best Supporting Actress, though she was previously named Best Actress for Misery.

"She has done so well in so many films, but her nude scene in About Schmidt took a lot of guts, and the academy will give her extra credit for that," he says.

He says that among the other Best Supporting Actress nominees, Queen Latifah and Catherine Zeta-Jones will cancel themselves out because both were nominated for Chicago and the vote will be split among voters who love the film, and Julianne Moore's chances to be rewarded for The Hours will be hurt by her being nominated as Best Actress for Far From Heaven.

"She's not the first one to be nominated for a leading role and a supporting role in the same year. What usually happens is voters who like the actor or actress split the vote because they only vote for the person once," he says.

Chris Cooper should win Best Supporting Actor for his role in Adaptation, Staples says, though John C. Reilly may walk away with the award for his role in Chicago. "We may see John C. Reilly do the Jim Broadbent thing. Last year, Jim Broadbent had three great supporting roles in Bridget Jones' Diary, Moulin Rouge and Iris, and won for Iris. This year, John C. Reilly had great supporting roles in The Hours and Gangs of New York as well as Chicago," he says. "But Chris Cooper's performance is just too brilliant to not win."

Staples notes some omissions among this year's nominees.

"Alfred Molina should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Frida. And I am sorry that Frida is not nominated for Best Picture. It is an incredible production, and I would love to see Salma Hayek, who is nominated for Best Actress, win," he says. "However, she may still be considered an outsider."

In addition, Staples says he wished My Big Fat Greek Wedding — one of last year's biggest hits — had been nominated for more awards than Best Original Screenplay.

"I would have liked to see Nia Vardalos nominated for Best Actress," he says.

BY NANCY KOLSTI nkolsti@unt.edu

Other featured articles in this issue

• UNT's first vice president for research and technology transfer named
• Promoting a safe spring break
• Regents assess new parking rates for 2003-04 school year
• North Texas Jazz Festival set April 4-6 in Addison
• The First Great UNT Cleanup
• Pohl talks to Faculty Senate about budget
• How the HIPAA privacy rule affects UNT researchers
• University, Honors, Alumni days in April
• Changes coming to UNT faculty election process

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