We're Amurricans and we love that ole' razzle dazzle, whether it's the Rob Marshall/Bob Fosse variety or the kind we'll all be watching on CNN or MSNBC starting tonight (i.e., Wednesday) or soon after.

If I were General Tommy Franks, I would mount top-of-the-line digital loudspeakers on tanks advancing toward Baghdad and have them play Queen Latifah's CHICAGO tune, "Reciprocity," at full blast.

But no, really, in all sincerity...hats off to the 8th most critically-admired film of 2002, according to a MOVIE CITY NEWS tabulation of ten-best lists assembled by 138 crème de la crème film critics. CHICAGO was also named as PREMIERE magazine's 17th most admired film of 2002, according to its 15-member critics group.

And with equal sincerity, best of luck to Saddam and his sons as they begin their efforts to dodge smart bombs and fend off assassin squads over the next few days.

Tip Sheet

All that matters now, of course, is the money -- the betting-pool stashes we'll all be contributing to on Friday or at whatever Oscar parties we wind up attending on Sunday. Here's how I see the races:

CHICAGO has been a lock to win Best Picture from the start, and nothing has changed on this score. Daniel Day Lewis has the Best Actor Oscar bagged and shagged unless THE PIANIST's Adrien Brody pulls off a surprise upset. Nicole Kidman's HOURS schnozz will get her the Best Actress Oscar. ADAPTATION's Chris Cooper will take the Best Supporting Actor trophy, and the Best Supporting Actress Oscar ought to go to ADAPTATION's Meryl Streep...but Catherine Zeta T-Mobile has picked up recent momentum for her CHICAGO turn.

Sadly, it's looking like poor, hard-luck Marty Scorsese has lost the Best Director Oscar, which was nearly his as a referendum on his having been repeatedly ignored by Oscar throughout his illustrious 30 year-career. As far as I can tell, Scorsese's slippage is due to a combination of (a) a perception of his having over-campaigned his way around Los Angeles over the past several weeks, (b) the William Goldman attack piece about "poor Marty" that ran in VARIETY a few weeks back, and (c) the scandal over the Miramax- orchestrated, Robert Wise, Scorsese-supporting advertorial that the L.A. TIMES' John Horn exposed late last week. It's too bad, but this is how things appear to be leaning.

The Best Original Screenplay winner will go to Pedro Almodovar for TALK TO HER, and don't even mention Nia Vardalos's nominated screenplay for MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING. (ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY dismissed it the best by writing, "An Academy Award? For Windex jokes?") It'll be a sad thing if ADAPTATION scribe Charlie Kaufman loses the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar to David Hare's script for THE HOURS, but it could happen.

I'm going with the late Conrad Hall taking the Best Cinematography Oscar for his work on ROAD TO PERDITION....unless somebody knows something I don't. (It's possible Ed Lachman's superb work on FAR FROM HEAVEN could punch through, but I doubt it.)

NOWHERE IN AFRICA is a lock to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

I'm presuming that Michael Moore's BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE has the Best Documentary Feature Oscar sewn up. I'm guessing that 9.11 sentiment will deliver a Best Documentary Short Subject Oscar for a purportedly touching piece about two brothers who died on that fateful day, called TWO TOWERS.

John Williams' music for CATCH ME IF YOU CAN is being called a likely winner for Best Original Score. Really? Because Elmer Bernstein's FAR FROM HEAVEN score is obviously far superior.

The brilliant SPIRITED AWAY ought to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar, but who knows? Any objections to DOG, the anti-apartheid South African piece, winning the Live Action Short Film award? Or THE CHUBBCHUBBS! winning the Best Animated Short Film Oscar? Your guesses are as good as mine.

CHICAGO ought to win the Best Editing Oscar (and it was very well cut, convincing the impressionable that Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere could hoof it like real pro's). FRIDA is an apparent lock to win the Best Makeup trophy.

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS should take Oscars for Best Visual Effects (that Gollum!) and, I'm guessing, Best Art Direction...but there's no real telling in the latter category. The Best Sound Oscar....hmmm. Well, those tommy guns sure sounded fantastic in ROAD TO PERDITION. The Best Sound Editing Oscar may go to THE TWO TOWERS, but I don't have a clue...do you?

GANGS OF NEW YORK ought to snag a consolation prize or two, and those 1850s' rags and beaver hats were amazing, so at least figure on Scorsese's film winning the Best Costume Design Oscar. I'm guessing ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY is right in saying U2's "The Hands That Built America" will win the Best Original Song Oscar; I know they're right in saying that Eminem's 8 MILE song, "Lose Yourself," won't have many supporters.

If any of these calls sounds wrong to any of you, please write in and explain how and why.

Monsters Ball

The behavior of big-star hair stylists can occasionally veer into the ballistic, or at least the bizarre.

I found this out 11 or 12 years ago when I heard from an impeccable, first-rate source what James Woods' personal stylist had been paid each week during the shooting of John Badham's THE HARD WAY (it worked out to something like $2 a follicle), only to be challenged by someone repping the stylist -- I think I could actually use the word "threatened" -- when this information appeared in a piece I wrote about star perks in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.

The woman's name didn't appear in the story, but she was freaked out regardless. I remember saying to myself, "She's angry because the world now knows a stylist in James Woods' direct employ got paid much more on this movie than run-of-the-mill hair stylists...this perturbs her?"

This was one reason, in any event, why Amy Wallace's latest piece of Hollywood reportage in LOS ANGELES magazine -- a look at the self-important, increasingly out-of-control behavior of big-star hair stylists -- struck a chord. It's called "Booty and the Beast," and the issue it's in will hit stands on Thursday. The gist is that Hollywood publicists are going on the record and saying to Wallace that "it's time to rein in a beauty industry that's gotten ugly."

It starts with a story about Jennifer Lopez's hairdresser, a guy named Oribe, throwing a tantrum when he arrived to work on J. Lo for a press junket she was doing for MAID IN MANHATTAN, that limp romantic drama she co-starred in with Ralph Fiennes, at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel last November.

Wallace reports that "when Lopez asked Sony to hire Oribe, the studio contracted to pay him his usual rate of $4,500 a day, plus $500 a day for his assistant, plus 20 percent for his booking agent." Sony specified in writing that it wouldn't provide him or his assistant with car service, says Wallace, and yet the Manhattan-based Oribe "threw a fit" on the first day of the junket by yelling at some publicists because no limo had been sent to pick him up.

A Sony marketing exec soon after put his foot down and insisted that Oribe apologize to the publicists he had railed at. No apology immediately resulted, and so Lopez fired Oribe. But a few days later, Wallace reports, she rehired him.

"It's award season in Hollywood, and the men and women who blow, tease, style, and make up A-list celebrities are working overtime, and charging time and a half for it," Wallace observes. "That in itself is not new, but for the first time in anyone's memory, studio executives are fed up.

"For years the studios have paid for their stars' so-called glam squads -- which also often include wardrobe stylists who gather clothes and accessories. It's an image business, and the better the talent looks, the better publicity a movie is likely to get. But lately, as some hair, makeup, and wardrobe people demand movie-star treatment for themselves, the relationship between studios and stylists has soured.

"'It's extortion,' says one executive. 'It's the biggest boondoggle in Hollywood,' says another. It's unlikely to change anytime soon, says a third: 'They've got us by the balls.'"

I don't know about the readership, but I eat this shit up. Hearing what people charge, and how and why they get it, is about as close to the meat and marrow of Hollywood politics as you can get. Wallace reports that "Sharon Stone's wardrobe stylist [once insisted that] a studio rent an entire suite at the Four Seasons just for the actress's clothes." And that Madonna once "demanded a studio pay a stylist $12,000 to bring her jewelry -- and then didn't wear any of it."

"It used to be reasonable -- $1,500 a day for hair, $1,500 a day for makeup," a publicist tells Wallace. "Now if you get each for $2,500 a day, you feel lucky."

But "the top names often charge more than twice that," she reports. "Sally Hershberger, who has done Meg Ryan's hair for years, charges as much as $6,000 a day, plus $4,200 a day when she's traveling. Makeup artist Brigitte Reiss-Andersen has been known to charge $4,000 a day to make Michelle Pfeiffer look presentable."

Anyway, it goes on and on like this and has a lot more juicy tales about the appetites of the diseased. Does it sound too hostile to suggest that these hair stylists should be flown to Iraq and thrown out over Kurd territory at 10,000 feet with parachutes and a survival kit, and made to get by on their wits? They need some kind of urgent therapy, that's for sure.

Hooray for the publicists who screwed up their courage and decided to go public with their beefs. Let's hope this is only the beginning. There's a lot more insanity in this business than just the kind divvied out by hair stylists.

Give Us a Break

In order to prevent the digi-recording of new movies with cell-phone cameras, the MPAA and the major studios have decided upon a new high-security policy at all-media screenings that will make what used to be a relatively simple and unfettered experience into a big security hassle. Suddenly, catching a new flick has been transformed into an experience akin to flying El-Al Airlines from Berlin to Tel Aviv.

My first taste of this happened at Tuesday night's (3.18) screening of Lawrence Kasdan's DREAMCATCHER at the Arclight Cinemas. And if it's any indication of what's in store for journalists at each and every upcoming all-media screening for the foreseeable future (a Warner Bros. spokesperson said this would probably be the case, as the MPAA has requested all distribs to fall in line), I foresee some kind of journalist revolt occuring within two to three weeks.

The trigger was a recent pirate digi-recording of a Warner Bros./Joel Silver flick, CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE. It was captured, it is believed, at some kind of recent advance screening of the film. A bootleg copy of CRADLE apparently made its way onto the black market soon after, and the response has been to merge all-media screenings with the aesthetic of the Israeli secret service.

First, I was told by Warner Bros. publicists that I couldn't take my cell phone or PDA (both of which I always have with me) into the theatre. Okay, no more last-minute calling or note-taking or periodical reading... but that's life. I walked all the way back to my car and put these devices into a bag on the floor in the back seat area. (Note to thieves -- breaking into cars parked near all-media screenings is about to become a much more profitable activity. Spread the word!)

Then I had to wait in a long, congested line of people as each and every moviegoer was scanned by security guys with metal detectors, which took forever and was taxing everyone's patience to the limit.

The 7:30 screening, which would have normally begun at 7:40 or thereabouts, started at 7:55 pm. On top of which there was some guy in a black suit eyeballing the audience during the screening with some kind of night-vision device, in a presumed attempt to try and catch someone trying to digi-tape the movie. As a Warner Bros. spokesperson acknowledged last night during a speech to the crowd, the new security measures have "ruined" the experience of attending an all-media screening.

The new policies are also alarmist, paranoid, absurd and rude. I've been a guest of Warner Bros. and other big distribs at all-media screenings for over 20 years, and I've never dreamt of having anything to do with illegal recording of movies. Ever. But because some asshole cowboy managed to record and sell on the black market some boilerplate Joel Silver movie, Warner Bros. and the folks at the MPAA are making me pay the parking ticket because they can't figure out any better way to protect their films from piracy.

You know what, fellas? I didn't care for DREAMCATCHER all that much on its own terms, but somehow the El Al gauntlet I went through last night made it seem slightly worse. I suggest that you figure something else out. Dispense security passes to trusted media friends so they don't have to go through this every time...something. This new policy sucks wind. Sticking to it will not enhance the value of your product.

Lonely All Over

Everywhere I've turned over the last few days I've been running into articles about director Nicholas Ray, one of the most admired auteur-level helmers in Hollywood history. There's a retrospecttive of his films now going on in New York, which has resulted in articles about Ray by David Thomson in the NEW YORK TIMES and Anthony Lane in THE NEW YORKER. But I'm not writing this piece to just fall into step.

In fact, I have vaguely disappointing news to convey, so I'm going to mention this first so I can end this article on a note of admiration, because there's a lot where that comes from.

The just-out DVD of of Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE (Columbia Tristar Home Video) is a first-rate thing produced by good people -- Sony preservationist and restorer Grover Crisp, principally. It also enjoys the participation of director Curtis Hanson, who delivers an eloquent explanation in a featurette about why this 1950 noir is still a powerful film, and what it's come to mean to him personally and professionally.

Crisp and his team worked on making this black-and-white Humphrey Bogart film look and sound as good as it can, mainly by removing dirt and scratches and digitalizing the soundtrack. (There's a second featurette on the DVD, in fact, that explains how meticulous they were in this effort.) But the hard truth is that IN A LONELY PLACE doesn't look anywhere near as sharp or luscious as the recently released Paramount Home Video DVD of Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD, which initially opened the same year as Ray's film, was also about Hollywood, and was shot in black and white in much the same way (i.e., using actual Los Angeles locations, in part).

Why? Grain. IN A LONELY PLACE looks grainy as hell, or rather it seems that way in contrast to the SUNSET BOULEVARD DVD, which was mastered by Lowry Digital in such a way that both dirt and grain were removed. I've been told I'm not respecting the celluloid tradition of film by praising the look of the BOULEVARD DVD, but the fact is that it looks good enough to eat -- ultra-detailed, razor sharp, deep blacks, that brushed-clean quality, etc.

Lowry Digital's SUNSET BOULEVARD looks better than any film or video version I've ever seen before precisely because of the removal of not just dirt, but the grain. I hate to sound like a Philistine, but after seeing an old big-studio feature that looks as good as Lowry's SUNSET BOULEVARD, I don't think I can go back and really enjoy a black-and-white film that hasn't been de-granularized in the same fashion.

Crisp and his crew restored IN A LONELY PLACE in the most traditionally respectful way they could, which partly involved keeping the grain (a normal by-product of celluloid imagery), but I just can't be kept down on the farm any more. The eye knows what it likes and there's just no comparison. I'm sorry but that's how it is.

It will always be a better thing, of course, to watch old films in a theatre on celluloid with the grain intact, like they looked when they first came out. But not on DVD -- not any more. The Lowry treatment looks too good. I frankly can't wait to see his work on a new CASABLANCA, which I've heard is coming out sometime later this year.

IN A LONELY PLACE is a dark, deeply emotional love story about a smart and gifted Hollywood screenwriter named Dixon Steele (Bogart) whose bad temper and violent streak threatens a relationship he's begun with an under-employed actress neighbor (Gloria Grahame) just as he's come under suspicion from the cops about the murder of a hat-check girl. The murder-mystery angle isn't played with as much as the war between Steele's better nature and the sometimes raging impulses that threaten to wreck his life.

In the main featurette, Hanson says he first saw IN A LONELY PLACE when he was about 14, and that it scared him while at the same time putting the hook in. "But it wasn't until a long time later that I began to understand why it captivated me the way it did," he says.

"The title works on several levels. First, there's the lonely place of any man, any human, coping with their internal demons. Then there's the lonely place that an artist exists in. And then, of course, there's the lonely place that the world [is] without love. One of the things that's unique about it is that it's ostensibly a murder-mystery -- who killed Mildred Atkinson? And yet as the movie unfolds that question is not of great interest to the key characters or to us, except how it impacts upon the key characters.

"Bogart gave quite a few great performances in [his] movies. I think what is particularly special about his portrayal of Dixon Steele is that one feels there's almost an absence of acting, an absence of technique...that we are actually seeing the essence of [Bogart] and seeing things that he himself perhaps did not want to reveal at other times.

"What's so powerful about the performance, and so admirable, I think, especially [given] that his own company produced the movie, is how ugly he is [in it]. He looks physically ugly at times. We see his vulnerability, his fears, his needs.

"What I came to realize as I became a filmmaker myself, was that we're not just seeing [in this film] a great performance by an actor -- we're seeing the essence of that actor and in fact you're understanding the essence of the filmmaker himself.

"This kind of collaboration between actor and director is, I think, for me, the highest thing to aspire to. I think every really good actor longs for this collaboration, but you can only have it if you have trust. If you have a director who is 'out there" with them. When it works this way, there is a marriage of content, acting and style that is staggering. Collaborations that come to mind that also achieved this is the [one] between James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock in VERTIGO, or Gena Rowlands and John Cassevettes with A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, or [between] John Wayne and John Ford in making THE SEARCHERS.

"Each of these pictures, is, I think, a masterpiece because of these collaborations, and I very much put IN A LONELY PLACE in that lofty category."

In other words, there's plenty in this film to haunt and pull you in without getting hung up on the visual issues, which didn't so much hang me up as slightly compromise, to a certain extent, my enjoyment of the eyeballing of this film. The nourishment I got from it was unaffected.

Best Animated Short

"If I were betting on the Oscars I'd put my money on DAS RAD for best animated short. The two major studio films (MIKE'S NEW CAR and the CHUBBCHUBBS) were funny but lightweight. The Japanese entry was just plain freaky. And THE CATHEDRAL was eye-candy, nothing more. DAS RAD is funny, interesting, and clever." -- Chris, Meg and Mary Ferris , Bellaire, Texas.

Wells to Ferris Clan: Thanks for the tip. You're not shilling for anyone, are you? Just asking.

Role Playing

Today's cast: David Caruso, Richard Price, Kathy Baker, Uma Thurman, Bill Murray and an unnamed lead actor who's not especially tall.

What's That Line?

Back from a three-week vacation, your favorite regular feature and mine.

Guy #1 has just walked into a convenience store, only to notice that Guy #2 is lying on the floor next to the cash-register guy, who's obviously not the cash-register guy but some hot-head thief who just happened to be ripping off the store. Anyway, Guy #1 doesn't want anyone to get hurt, so...

Guy #1: Oh, Jesus, don't shoot him. Please. Don't...

[Hot-head thief pulls a gun on him]

Guy #1: Let me tell ya, there's a crime scene right down the block. You shoot, they'll hear. Please... you want the money? Just take it. Go out the back. Did you take it yet?
Guy #2 (mockingly): "Did you take it yet?" Jesus Christ...
Hot-head thief: Shut up!
Guy #1: You want the money? You want the money? Just, here...

[He deftly causes cash register to open with left hand, and thief puts the cash in his pockets]

Guy #1: You smoke? Whaddaya smoke? Huh? Take some cartons here. You like some candy?
Guy #2: "Do you like candy?" Why don't you give him a fucking back rub while you're at it?
Hot-head thief: I said shut up!!
Guy #1: [to thief, pleading] Please, go out the back. Ya gotta go now. Go out the back. You gotta go quiet. Please. You can make it. Ya gotta go now, though.
Guy #2: Call him a cab, huh??
Hot-head thief: [to Guy #2] Get the fuck up! [Guy #2 gets onto his knees, staring straight at thief.]
Guy #1: Please... please.
Guy #2: [to Guy #2] Do you like Rice-a-Roni? How 'bout a nice Diet Sprite?
Guy #1: I'm tellin' ya, they're right down the block!
Guy #2: [To thief ] Hey!?

[Guy #2 spits into thief's face. Thief hits him in the head with gun butt, runs out the back door& gone. Guy #1 starts in direction of back door, then turns and looks at Guy #2]

Guy #1: Are you okay?
Guy #2: [Pure contempt] Fuck off.
Guy #1: [heading toward rear of store] Call 911. Tell them police officer needs assistance.
Guy #2: [Incredulous] You're a cop?