EXTREMELY EARLY OSCAR PREDICTIONS

I’ve seen the best film of the year, and it’s Martin Scorcese’s “The Departed.” But since there’s still four other Best Picture slots to fill, the question becomes, “Which lucky movies will get to come in second for the title of 2006’s best projected entertainment?”

Now of course, the Oscar prognosticating started long before I wrote this post. However, I have an angle that I wish to explore, and no other web-based publication I’ve perused has harped on it yet. So here it is: Oscar-wise, 2006 will be remembered as The Year of the Woman.

Okay, what do I mean by that? It seems that every year, the majority of Best Picture nods can be categorized by a particular theme, some common quality that sets the quintet of would-be Oscar champions apart from the previous five. For example, 2005 might be recalled as The Year of the Socially-Conscious Movie, what with “Brokeback Mountain,” “Munich,” “Goodnight and Good Luck,” and “Crash” taking on Really Big and Important Subjects.

Meanwhile, I think of 2004 as The Year of the Biopic, represented by Best Picture nominees “The Aviator,” “Ray,” and “Finding Neverland.” From what I’ve heard, “Finding Neverland” may have been as accurate an account of J. M. Barrie’s life as “Shakespeare in Love” was for its own titular personage, but let’s not forget, 2004 also featured nominations in various categories for “Kinsey” and “Hotel Rwanda.”

How should we label 2003? How about The Year of the Big Sweeping Epic? After all, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” and “Seabiscuit” were among the five competing in Oscar night’s main event. Call me a pragmatist, but I can only assume that these three films had been nominated because they were Big Sweeping Epics. I back that assessment by reminding everyone that they combined for zero acting nominations.

2002 could be called The Year of Miramax, since the studio produced four out of the five Best Picture nominees. The year before, 2001, was no Year of the Space Odyssey, but rather, Tripping Down a Hole of a Different Kind, what with “The Fellowship of the Ring,” “Moulin Rouge!” and John Forbes Nash’s unstable brain in “A Beautiful Mind” representing just a few of the many high-profile, fantastical worlds that took the viewer someplace that wasn’t quite reality.

Having said all that, I’m already pigeonholing this as The Year of the Woman, since just about every movie with terrific word-of-mouth features challenging roles for actresses. For example, there is Stephen Frears’ “The Queen,” starring Helen Mirren as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, coping publicly and privately with the death of Princess Diana.

On the other hand, Todd Field’s sophomore effort “Little Children” has drawn rave reviews for Kate Winslet, who plays a bored housewife. The premise – married couples cheat on each other in suburbia – may have drawn comparisons to “American Beauty,” but hey, that film won a truckload of Oscars.

Speaking of not forgetting, let’s not overlook the big American studios, which can also make movies about strong, inspiring female characters. This fall, DreamWorks has the musical “Dreamgirls” on-deck to score points with the American Idol crowd. I know next-to-nothing about it, except that it’s based on a Broadway musical set in the 1960’s, and revolves around a trio of black soul singers akin to The Supremes. As far as pedigree, “Dreamgirls” has a respected director in Bill Condon, who won a screenplay Oscar for “Gods and Monsters” and adapted the 2002 Best Picture winner “Chicago.” He was also nominated for Best Screenplay for his last film “Kinsey.”

So including “The Departed,” that makes four Best Picture nominees. What about the fifth? I have yet to hear raves for Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers,” while NBC film critic Jeffrey Lyons urged a bunch of us journalists to check out Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Babel,” which co-stars Cate Blanchett. But I’m thinking of going out on a limb, and predicting that the fifth Best Picture nomination will go to Pedro Almodovar’s “Volver.” It reportedly has Penelope Cruz in the performance of a lifetime. Also, Almodovar’s films won Best Foreign Language Picture twice in the last seven years, and his “Talk To Her” nabbed the 2002 Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

When it comes to foreign filmmakers with critical recognition on these shores, it’s seems reasonable to side with either Pedro or Ang Lee.

To recap, Phil X’s Extremely Early Oscar Predictions for 2006 are (alphabetically):

“The Departed”

“Dreamgirls”

“Little Children”

“The Queen”

“Volver”

Of course, that’s if “Jackass 2” doesn’t sweep the early critics’ prizes.