What makes a movie Oscar-worthy, exactly? As we all know, it needn't be the best quality film of the year, or even the tenth-best. Aside from the usual political considerations, winners usually draw votes by tapping into some politically correct hot-button issue or by providing a satisfying lump-in-the-throat residue. (Or, in a pinch, by being the latest spectacular, big-canvas, pricey-production-value flick in the BEN-HUR tradition, like GLADIATOR and BRAVEHEART.)

Having read about CHICAGO and seen the trailer, and having talked to a few who saw a rough cut of it last week, its story -- about a pair of female murderers (Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta Jones) reveling in the glare of media fame in 1920s Chicago, and how their fates are manipulated by their Johnny Cochran-like attorney (Richard Gere) -- sounds like a reflection of our own jaundiced times.

I'm just spitballing, but I'm not sure how hot-buttony this will seem to audiences. A movie that says the ethical-moral malaise that has spread like cancer throughout our present-day society was alive and percolating in the 1920s...big deal.

CHICAGO was described to me on Monday as essentially a jailhouse musical by way of PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. Zellweger plays chorus girl Roxie Hart, who's been jailed for shooting her unfaithful boyfriend. In the slammer she meets Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones), another chorus girl/murderess who's currently enjoying press attention courtesy of her attorney, Billy Flynn (Gere). But then Flynn takes on Roxie's case also, and soon Velma starts to feel like yesterday's news as Roxie becomes the most famous wayward woman in town.

The focus, however, isn't on Zeta-Jones but Zellweger. "It's clearly Roxie's story," says a viewer.

John C. Reilly, who reportedly goes to town at one point with a great musical number, plays Roxie's husband. Taye Diggs is a band leader. Queen Latifah plays Mama Morton, a prison matron, and Christine Baranski plays a tabloid reporter. The concept, according to one source, is that "this woman is in jail and the musical numbers are her fantasy. It's a little bit like PENNIES FROM HEAVEN and it does work on this level."

The tone of the film, according to all descriptions, is glossily, unregenerately cynical. Two viewers I spoke to were pretty much delighted with this; one less so. The dissenter, who otherwise admires CHICAGO in most respects, observes that the film "has no heart." If this last reaction gets around, CHICAGO could be in for some difficulties.

Then again, it may become everything Miramax wants it to be. It seems likely to be a very popular film with almost everyone, and it's an apparent shoo-in to win the Best Comedy or Musical Golden Globe award next January, and could wind up snagging a Best Picture nomination, since musicals can usually count on being popular with Academy voters, and this one sounds exceptional.

One guy I spoke to who'd seen the recent stage revival of the Bob Fosse-created show in Los Angeles said he "really liked it" and "thought it was a really good translation...it really works and is a lot of fun to watch." He added that the stage production he saw "is a wonderfully cynical show and the movie has kept the cynicism."

A New Yorker said she's still "trying to figure this out" but that she "found it incredibly enjoyable." Is it Oscar material? "I couldn't decide, I couldn't decide...am I a musical fan? Yeah, I am. It's old-fashioned and new-fashioned. It's very inventively staged, with all these women in this cell block sort-of breaking out into musical numbers and into other realms.

"I thought it was a great performance piece," she continues. "Everybody has their little moments. Richard Gere is very winning and entertaining, and his singing, I was told, was done with his own voice. I think Renee will become a Best Actress nominee out of this, and Catherine Zeta Jones will get a Best Supporting Actress nomination."

Gere and Renee "don't really have a relationship...there's no love story here. It's really all just about sizzle. I also think it's very sexy. It wasn't as manic as MOULIN ROUGE. I really have no idea how much of the public will find this enjoyable. I can't decide about Best Picture...I'm better at [judging] performances than films. I just don't know."

The qualified naysayer agrees that Gere is extremely charming and that Zellweger will definitely be nominated for Best Actress, but doesn't think Zeta Jones will be nominated. While he feels MOULIN ROUGE is a great musical, "All I can say is that I didn't jump up and down and say, this is a great musical film. I was hoping it would be as good as ALL THAT JAZZ and CABARET , and it's not. It doesn't get you emotionally....not at all. It isn't set up that way, and I think that could be a problem with the Academy."

John C. Reilly's part is "too small" to corral a Best Supporting Actor nomination, says another, but his musical number is a definite standout.

On the other hand, he adds, "Miramax knows exactly what it's doing. This is an incredibly commercial movie. It could play very well to the Academy, which loves musicals. And Renee does an amazing job of taking a dislikable figure and making her incredibly likable."

Eleven weeks to go...

...in the '02 Best Picture Oscar race, and to some industry watchers the list of hopefuls is almost non-existent.

About a year ago last October I was the first journalist to come out with a big piece (in the New York Daily News) quoting Hollywood sources who were flatly predicting that A BEAUTIFUL MIND would win the Best Picture Oscar. But aside from the buzz about CHICAGO and ANTWONE FISHER, there are no strong hints or signals (or even wild claims from publicists) that a strong Oscar favorite is in the wings, or is even approaching in November or December.

A publicist wrote last week, "There's not even one sure thing by the end of October, [and] that's gotta be a record." He hasn't seen CHICAGO or FISHER, but what he was really griping about was a lack among the year's releases so far of a particular alchemy Academy types tend to look for. He meant that so far this year there haven't been any really touching, well-crafted, lump-in-your-throat movies with big or medium-range stars.

I'm not a huge fan of Michael Hoffman's THE EMPEROR'S CLUB, a DEAD POET'S SOCIETY-type ethical drama that's opening on 11.22, but its elevated tone and high-mindedness is the kind of thing Academy voters sometimes go for. "At least it's timely and poignant, unlike many of the other [contenders]," says a supporter.

Some really good films -- CHANGING LANES, BLOODY SUNDAY, THE QUIET AMERICAN (opens on Nov. 22), THE ROOKIE, ROAD TO PERDITION, SIGNS, MINORITY REPORT -- have punched through this year, but aren't generally seen as big emotional trips.

My personal opinion is that the five best so far are LANES, SUNDAY, QUIET AMERICAN, ROOKIE and ROAD TO PERDITION...but what do I know? People have been writing me left and right urging me to put THE TWO TOWERS into the Oscar Balloon as a Best Picture contender, but my loathing for last year's LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING is a significant mental block at this stage. (At least I admit it.)

Apart from CHICAGO and, to some extent, ANTWONE FISHER, unseen Academy contenders include Martin Scorsese's GANGS OF NEW YORK (a Leonardo DiCaprio film that Miramax's Harvey Weinstein is insisting upon opening on 12.25, on the same day as DiCaprio's other holiday flick, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, which suggests Harvey thinks it has a good chance of racking up points with critics and maybe placing as an Oscar finalist), Steven Soderbergh's SOLARIS, Douglas McGrath's NICHOLAS NICKLEBY and Stephen Daldry's THE HOURS.

On other fronts, however, word is leaking through on this or that upcoming prestige title and prompting handicappers to hedge their bets.

Julie Taymor's FRIDA...good but not good enough. Cutis Hanson's 8 MILE...admirably rough-edged and Eminem has real charisma, but too dark and despairing for the Academy. George Clooney's CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND is a question mark, but a publicist friend tells me I should take it out of my Oscar Balloon box, plus there's been some internet buzz that it may be a bit too self-regarding. Steven Spielberg's CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (which I've read in script form) is starting to be assessed as an absorbing caper film and buddy flick, but perhaps not an Oscar-level thing. Spike Jonze's ADAPTATION is regarded as an intriguing, self-reflecting, dual-reality drama that, people tell me, doesn't quite get it all the way around the track.

Bottom line, at the risk of redundancy: Nobody knows anything, but right now things are looking best for CHICAGO and ANTWONE FISHER. On the other hand, says one handicapper, "Denzel won last year and that is always the wild card -- a previous win. It's the only reason Russell Crowe didn't win [for Best Actor]."

This Was Cinerama

It's not that I felt burned, exactly, after paying $14 bucks to see THIS IS CINERAMA at the ArcLight's Cinerama Dome theatre. But I was a little bit surprised at how painfully lame the content was for this 1952 travelogue, which was the first Cinerama film ever seen and which stirred a lot of excitement when it opened.

I had never seen a real Cinerama film before, and initially it felt like a rush. (I trust everyone knows that Cinerama is a pre-CinemaScope process that came out of a special 35mm camera capturing three separate images on three rolls of film, and then projecting them together as a seamless widescreen image.) The Dome's three-projector presentation on its ultra-curved screen looks terrific. The Cinerama image is wider than your standard 2.35 to 1 Scope or Panavision ratio, and I was able to sit dead-center and close to the front, and just lose myself in it.

Or in the opening roller-coaster sequence, rather, which was filmed at an amusement park at Long Island's Rockaways Beach. It probably isn't the mind-blower it was fifty years ago, but it's still fairly cool.

The other big attraction is the helicopter finale over the Grand Canyon and other scenic points of interest, with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the soundtrack. I didn't much like this sequence. I could feel some kind of 1952 jingoistic patriotic thing going on in the minds of the filmmakers. We are the Grand Canyon, spiritually-speaking, and the Grand Canyon is us. Understand that it, the flag, Dwight D. Eisenhower and America's proud traditions are one and the same. Watch the skies for incoming Communists and aliens!

The rest of THIS IS CINERAMA feels smug, lazy and middle-aged. The Cinerama camera just plops itself down in front of some arresting scenic vista and expects us to be floored by the technology alone -- by what it's shooting instead of how. Lowell Thomas, the once-pioneering journalist who serves as the film's host and narrator, is the guy to blame. "We didn't want to be judged on subject matter," he explained sometime back then. "The logical thing to do was to make Cinerama the hero. And that is what we ...tried to do."

There's a static, sepia-tone shot of the Long Island Choir singing Handel's "Messiah" that seems to go on for hours and made me think about leaving. (I stayed put when I reminded myself how much I'd paid to get in.) There's another flatline sequence showing a ballet of some kind, then the camera goes to Venice and hops a ride on a gondola. Then it's off to Vienna for a concert by the Vienna Boys Choir.....zzzzz. If you think this paragraph is boring, you should see the movie.

I gave up after a while and started looking for little hints and indications of what life was like in 1952. I was struck by the fact that virtually every male above the age of 15 wore a jacket and tie back then. People had chubbier cheeks and seemed meeker and more regimented that people do today. The children look happy but vaguely sedated, and afraid to express anything that hasn't been pre-approved by their parents. They look like uniform, well-behaved little suburban militia boys.

THIS IS CINERAMA will be playing at the Dome today (i.e., Wednesday) and tomorrow. Down the road the Dome will be showing a three-strip Cinerama presentation of HOW THE WEST WAS WON, which didn't have loads of great content either, but at least it's got Henry Fonda and James Stewart dressed in wigs and buckskins and hitting on frontier wimmin.

Consider This

Paul Schrader's AUTO FOCUS opens a week from Friday (10.18), having been pretty thoroughly sampled and sifted through by journalists who caught it at the recent Telluride, Toronto and New York Film Festivals. It's basically a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of leading an unexamined life, which is pretty much what brought down its lead character -- i.e., HOGAN'S HEROES star and compulsive sex-addict Bob Crane (played by Greg Kinnear). The point of the movie, more or less, is that Crane was pretty much a selfish, clueless asshole, and that we, the impressionable, should think twice about following his example.

Schrader, the concerned Calvinist who can't resist dipping into dark, obsessed characters, isn't saying we shouldn't cat around like Crane or even avoid willing women. He's saying don't get lost in it, and certainly not to the exclusion of thinking "beyond," developing ourselves, finding satori, etc.

I wasn't knocked out when I came out of my first AUTO-FOCUS screening, but I found myself liking and respecting it a lot more the next morning. I'd thought and thought about it, and it had kicked in. This is always a mark of a quality piece. We all know how cheap-high movies are out of your system before you make it to the parking garage, and how the better ones have a way of lingering. See this thing and tell me if you don't have some kind of similar reaction with your morning coffee.

In any case, I was thinking last weekend about something fresh to say, so I asked my screenwriter pals Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (authors of THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT and ED WOOD), who developed the AUTO-FOCUS script and also produced, if there's anything that critics and feature writers have missed so far.

"The only aspect that I feel has been underplayed is the technology angle," Karaszewsi wrote back. "The 'it's gonna take my mind a few seconds to wrap around that' concept. The concept that, to Bob Crane, video was like fire to a caveman -- new, unheard of. 'You mean I can re-experience what I did last night over and over and over?' So much so that his life became about re-living rather than living. He got off on reruns... HOGAN'S HEROES, the sex tapes, and naming both of his sons Bob.

"Crane's relationship with Carpenter" -- i.e., the TV star's onetime friend and likely murderer John Carpenter, played by Willem Dafoe -- "is based on technology, not sex. When the girls first come over, the boys would rather talk about the new equipment. It's like today when guys talk about their TV sets... it's still all about who has the biggest penis. 'Mine's 45 inches.' 'Oh, really? I've got a 60-inch one.'"

Dragon Bites

"Thanks for slapping Dino, Brett, and Tony Hopkins. I've literally no interest in seeing that piece of trash, and think it's a damn shame that folks as talented as Fiennes, Norton, and Hoffman (fer crissakes!) participated in this soulless endeavor to make money for Dino. I had an amusing time during a morning break reading some of the reviews -- some of them rushing to fellate Ratner for a brilliant homage to SILENCE, etc. Makes me wanna puke. Couldn't Dino at least have picked someone with some guts? -- Joel Sadler

"Reading about how Brett Ratner actually hired the same production designer who worked on SILENCE OF THE LAMBS reminds me of how I felt when I heard that Gus Van Zant was remaking PSYCHO. Why? What for? How can a film really stand on its own when part of its working structure is based on a look, and tone of another film created by another artist? Besides, the whole dungeon vibe that they are trying to recreate for the mental hospital scenes feels a little bit like a Roger Corman film (ironic since Jonathan Demme got his first feature job from Corman). I prefer the white antiseptic look of the mental hospital in MANHUNTER, which is really more analogous to Hannibal Lechter's dual genius/psychopath personality." -- Sean Broyles

"Allegedly, Dino de Laurentiis forced the title change on Mann when YEAR OF THE DRAGON, another de Laurentiis-produced film, flopped the year before. The logic was something along the lines of 'people don't want to go see movies with the word 'dragon' in the title. Given that MANHUNTER, which was dumped into theaters in August of '86, grossed less than $9 million in the theaters, it would appear that the logic was flawed. To put that gross in perspective, HOWARD THE DUCK, which is considered one of the biggest flops of all time, also opened in August of '86 and grossed $16 million, or twice that of Mann's film." -- Richard Barrett

Role Playing

Bob Shaw of Silicon Valley was first to identify Friday's cast. They appeared together in Stuart Heisler's 1955 classic mystery twister, I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES, which was a remake of Raoul Walsh's HIGH SIERRA "with a gritty, explode-off-the-screen performance by Jack Palance."

Today's cast: Keith Moon, James Booth, Ron Hackett, David Essex, Ringo Starr, Johnny Shannon, the Debonairs, Rosemary Leach, Billy Fury, James Ottoway.

What's That Line?

Clay Clifton was first to identify Friday's dialogue. It's from TRUE ROMANCE (1993), directed by Tony Scott from a script by Quentin Tarantino (with what I've read was an uncredited assist from Roger Avary). The speaking actors are Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper. (The non-speaking James Gandolfini is standing behind Hopper during the entire scene.)

A younger guy is leaning into an open window of a idling car. An older guy is sitting behind the wheel and they're talking things over. [Note: this is from a script, and is not a transcript from a film, so there are slight variations.]

Younger Guy: Hey, Mr. [name]. It's [name].
Older Guy: (weary) Hi, [name].

They shake hands through the car window.

Younger Guy: How's the concrete business?
Older Guy: Oh, I don't know. By the time you hit 45, you've been fucked over so many times you don't really care anymore.
Younger Guy: I'm sorry to hear that.

Older guy sighs, stares out the windshield, looks back at younger guy.

Older Guy: So what's the secret, [name]?
Younger Guy: The secret?
Older Guy: Yeah. You look like you've got it all figured out.
Younger Guy: (pause) I don't know. I think you just gotta find something you love to do, then do it for the rest of your life. (shrugs) For me, it's [can't be disclosed or guessing this would be too easy].

Younger guy looks very serious. Older guy smiles and nods.

Name the film, the year of release, the director, the screenwriter(s), and the actors in the scene.