OSCAR CONTENDERS TAKE LEFT TURN HOLLYWOOD EXPERIENCES A NEW ERA OF PROGRESSIVE FILMS.

Byline: Ed Rampell Local View

NOT since the 1940s, when the pro-union ``The Grapes of Wrath'' and the antifascist ``The Great Dictator'' were Best Picture nominees, have so many left-tilting studio features, indies and documentaries been in Academy Award contention. Clearly socially conscious movies - from ``Good Night, and Good Luck'' to ``Brokeback Mountain'' - are back.

All of this year's Best Picture contenders break the mold of big-budget blockbuster, Titanic-type Tinseltown entertainment. George Clooney's ``Good Night, and Good Luck'' is a low-budget, black-and-white docudrama about CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow's expose of Sen. Joe McCarthy. ``Crash'' is a nitty-gritty look at racism in L.A. released by an indie distributor. Steven Spielberg's ``Munich,'' about terrorism and the Arab-Israeli conflict, raises right-wing eyebrows by presenting Palestinian perspectives while questioning Israel's targeted assassination tactics. With its home-on-the-range homosexuals, ``Brokeback Mountain'' explores gay themes, as does the Truman Capote biopic ``Capote.''

The trend extends to the acting categories as well. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heath Ledger are nominated, respectively, for Best Actor for ``Capote'' and ``Brokeback,'' while Jake Gyllenhaal is up for Best Supporting Actor in ``Brokeback.'' Felicity Huffman is nominated for Best Actress for portraying a transsexual in ``Transamerica.'' Gender issues also inform ``North Country,'' a docudrama about America's first workplace sexual-harassment lawsuit, with Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand contending for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards.

Other nominations also lean left. In the adapted screenplay category, along with ``Brokeback,'' ``Capote'' and ``Munich,'' ``A History of Violence'' and John le Carre's ``The Constant Gardener'' compete for the golden statuettes. According to star Viggo Mortenson, ``History'' ruminates on America's penchant for resorting to violence to resolve problems. The film's William Hurt is nominated for Best Supporting Actor, while ``Gardener's'' Rachel Weisz, as an activist challenging big pharmaceutical companies in Africa, is competing for Best Supporting Actress. David Strathairn's portrayal of newsman Murrow scored a Best Actor nomination.

In addition to Best Director and Best Original Screenplay nominations for ``Good Luck,'' Clooney is a Best Supporting Actor contender for portraying a CIA agent in ``Syriana,'' a Middle East thriller that critiques U.S. foreign policy. This is the first time a Best Director candidate has been nominated for an acting Oscar for a different picture in the same year.

Foreign and nonfiction films also perpetuate the Academy's left-of- center trend. The Hitchcockian ``Paradise Now,'' about suicide bombers, is the first Palestinian production ever Oscar-nominated. ``Tsotsi'' is a hard-hitting drama about South African ghetto and thug life. France's ``Joyeux Noelle'' depicts a real-life Christmas trench warfare truce during World War I. Germany's ``Sophie Scholl - The Final Days'' is a biopic about an anti-Hitler activist.

In the Best Documentary Feature category, Bobby Kennedy's daughter Rory produced ``Street Fight,'' a liberal look at a reformer's campaign to unseat Newark's longtime mayor. Activist actor Martin Sheen and commentator Arianna Huffington presented it at a screening with Jane Fonda's ex-husband and former Chicago 7 defendant Tom Hayden and United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta - who'd just returned from visiting Venezuela with leftist singer Harry Belafonte, who called President Bush ``the greatest tyrant (and) terrorist in the world.'' Although Eugene Jarecki's biting military-industrial-complex analysis ``Why We Fight'' isn't in Oscar contention, ``Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room'' - a scathing critique of corporate criminals - is.

Tinseltown's first period of conscience and consciousness-raising movies came during the Great Depression and World War II, with populist and anti-Nazi films such as ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' and ``Casablanca.'' Progressive Hollywood's second wave was in the 1960s and '70s, with power-to-the-people pictures like Arlo Guthrie's antiwar ``Alice's Restaurant'' and Melvin Van Peebles' ``Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.''

Grant Heslov, who produced and co-wrote ``Good Night, and Good Luck'' with Clooney, explains: ``When George and I conceived this ... it was to (ask): Is the media questioning authority enough? To us, that is the most important job of the fourth estate. Clearly, they weren't doing that during the lead-up to the war.'' But poor reporting didn't make truth disappear. As Heslov indicates, it moved to other mediums, and progressive Hollywood re-emerged as a sort of fifth estate.

An indispensable factor for Left Coast progressivism is an audience that pays to see political subjects. With only four nominations in mostly technical categories, ``King Kong'' is the $200 million-plus ape in the room, and like other wannabe blockbusters, has under-performed at the box office, indicating escapism is out, and thought-provoking topicality is in. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, ``Munich,'' the most expensive Best Picture nominee, cost $70 million and its worldwide gross is more than $100 million. The $6.5 million ``Crash'' is doing boffo box office, scoring more than $83 million. The $14 million ``Brokeback'' has earned upward of $73 million. Heslov says the $7 million ``Good Luck'' sold more than $30 million in tickets.

Once again, progressives behind and in front of the cameras are creating compelling, politically aware works. Audiences are responding and the Motion Picture Academy is sitting up and paying attention. No matter who the Oscar winners are, the progressive Hollywood trend continues, with Sean Penn's ``All the King's Men'' and Michael Moore's ``Sicko'' and ``Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2'' coming soon to theaters near you.

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