NO BEST PICTURE HERE BUT STILL PLENTY TO ENJOY ABOUT THIS YEAR'S RACE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

IT'S GREAT TO KNOW that Hollywood can still put on a show.

I started to worry that the movie establishment had forgotten its primary mission to entertain us when the 74th Annual Academy Awards nominations were announced six weeks ago. Not that there weren't some worthy contenders in the mix, but for the first time in well more than a decade of Oscar watching, I felt no passion for any of the best-picture nominees.

There is usually at least one film I can fully get behind. Last year, it was ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.'' While I admire aspects of all of this year's entries and appreciate the high level of craftsmanship each one exhibits, so, too, do they all possess serious flaws. None of them excited me as an aesthetic achievement as strongly as did a handful of non-nominated 2001 films, leaving me without something to root for in the big race.

Thankfully, the studios, nominees and assorted outset parties have kept this year's race interesting in what must be the most venal Academy Awards campaign season ever.

Here are a couple of examples:

--Who hasn't enjoyed (besides the folks at Universal and ultra-decent director Ron Howard) the circus of negative revelations about ``A Beautiful Mind's'' subject, schizophrenic Nobel laureate John Forbes Nash Jr., that the movie failed to address? Unless you work in British television, the collateral damage caused by ``Mind'' star Russell Crowe's egomaniacal behavior (and poetry reading) was pretty good fun, too.

--Then there has been the controversy stirred up by the unusual situation of three African-American nominations for top acting honors. What's intriguingly ironic about this is that necessary debate concerning institutional Hollywood racism is inevitably trivialized by linkage to a glamour event like an awards show, while consideration of Halle Berry, Will Smith and Denzel Washington's highly deserving work is being influenced by other forces rather than judged as it should be, on artistic quality alone.

--We've seen right-wing pundits call for a boycott of that most American of filmmakers, ``Gosford Park'' director Robert Altman. And elegant eminences like Stanley Donen and Cyd Charisse stump for a musical they never would have made. And Miramax, using the studio's favorite word, trying to convince voters that downer movies about recrimination, revenge and madness are really about ``redemption.''

--Best of all has been the juicy speculation about which rival camps have been spreading embarrassing rumors about their competitors. Hollywood has proven as deft as the Pentagon at controlling the dissemination of news, disinformed or otherwise, this year, and the entertainment media has dutifully fallen all over itself to run rabid after every suggestion, if very little solid truth.

Yes, it's been quite a show. And, in all likelihood, it's been a better one than we'll see today, when what everyone is calling the least predictable Oscars in years will probably turn out to be a conventionally ``Beautiful'' night.

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Photo:

It wasn't Russell Crowe's performance in ``A Beautiful Mind,'' but his behavior later, that triggered collateral damage for the film.

Box:

bob, glenn... & oscar

Our film critics Bob Strauss and Glenn Whipp offer their predictions for this year's Academy Awards.