Oscar Pre-Mortem.

Often as I have commented on the stupidity of the Academy Awards, a periodic swift kick still seems indicated. This year, as every year, the nominations are food for vituperation. Perhaps, when Oscar Night rolls around, this column will help you laugh, lament, or conceivably even nod in approval with me. In such categories as Makeup or Sound, the choices may manage to be sound. For the others, I am less hopeful.

As you may recall, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a whole vote only on Best Picture; on Best Foreign Picture only if they deigned to bestir themselves to catch such non-Hollywood products and signed the register. In other categories, it is only the practitioners who get to vote-directors on directing, actors on acting, cinematographers on cinematography, etc.-which strikes me as highly debatable: Wouldn't directors' votes on actors be just as valid as actors'?

But the biggest problem arises when a foreign film gets nominated in a category such as Art Direction, as this year, when Jean Rabasse has been recognized for his splendid work in Vatel. Chances are that few Hollywood art directors caught this film, and that even fewer can rise above chauvinism in the voting. That Harvey Weinstein of Miramax, as is his wont, re-edited the film-a euphemism for chopping it to bits-does not help its chances either.

In any case, the Academy's current nominations in the major categories leave much to be desired. For Best Picture, the nominees are the agreeable but bland Chocolat, which Miramax has been pushing with lavish hype (never underestimate the honey of freebees); Erin Brockovich, a good enough movie by current American standards; Gladiator, an overblown Roman epic in the hallowed De Mille tradition (twelve nominations!); Traffic, a not uninteresting movie about the drug war in Mexico and the U.S., derived from a British TV series; and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (ten nominations), which I hitherto avoided, but must now reluctantly advert to.

A Taiwanese, Chinese-language movie directed by Ang Lee (who gave us, among others, Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm), it is based on a Chinese novel adapted by two Chinese screenwriters and the American James Schamus. An amalgam of kung fu and magic realism, it is a marriage made in hell. Of all literary genres, I find magic realism the hardest to underrate; of all film genres, kung fu.

The story about a quasi-magic sword and quasi-human heroes and villains fighting over it-actually one hero, two heroines, plus one villainess who also dispenses poisoned darts-is just good enough for children, though it may not be bloody enough for them. The dialogue is not worth mentioning, and people corkscrewing vertically into the air or running up walls, or else jumping from building to building in what is more flying than leaping, does not make my heart leap up.

Not much chance for acting from the film's stick figures, but Zhang Ziyi, the ingenue, is pretty. There are striking landscapes and lavish interiors, expertly shot by Peter Pau. Otherwise, this is hardly deserving of the rare honor of a foreign film being nominated for Best Picture, even if the last time this happened, the picture-Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful-was even worse.

By far the finest American film of the year was You Can Count on Me, guilty of the sin of not being a Hollywood product and duly unnominated. That it is subtle, adult, and non-formulaic must also have weighed heavily against it. Throw enough sand and sandals, wild beasts and battles in the Teutonic woods onto the screen, and few of those worthy Academicians, nurtured on Quo Vadis and The Sign of the Cross, will go thumbs down in this arena.

For Best Actor, we are offered Javier Bardem as the Cuban homosexual writer Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls, a standard performance hampered by the actor's thick Spanish accent; but picking him shows how politically correct about Hispanics and homosexuals the voters are. Next, Russell Crowe as the brooding hero of Gladiator-or as the brooding Russell Crowe-but where were the voters last year when Crowe did more than brood in The Insider but lost out anyway? Tom Hanks does all right in Cast Away, but standing ovations for Hanks are a cliche by now; no surprises from him, unless it was the strenuous diet he went on for the role. Ed Harris huffs and puffs, and sometimes even rants, as the lead in Pollock, a film about the tormented action painter, but a drip is still only a drip. Finally, Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade in the worthless Quills; any savvy, slick actor with a British (or Australian) accent could have done as much.

The astonishingly fresh performance by Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me-as a touching drifter who always wants to do right but usually screws up, and who makes you feel the contradictory impulses inside him jostling each other-goes unnoticed. So, too, Alfred Molina's sensitively understated work in the complex role of the mayor in Chocolat.

The Best Actress category offers Joan Allen in The Contender, an intelligently low-key performance; Juliette Binoche, charming in Chocolat; Ellen Burstyn, powerful in the messily self-destructing Requiem for a Dream; Laura Linney, devastatingly manifold in You Can Count on Me; and Julia Roberts as Julia Roberts-sorry, Erin Brockovich- the flashiest part and, therefore, a likely winner.

Supporting Actor? Jeff Bridges in The Contender, Benicio Del Toro in Traffic, and especially Albert Finney in Erin Brockovich are solid choices. But Willem Dafoe is too campy by half even for a vampire playing a vampire in the ineffably foolish Shadow of the Vampire, and Joaquin Phoenix hardly rises from the ashes of Gladiator, where the late Oliver Reed is so much better.

Supporting Actress: We go from the sublime Judi Dench in Chocolat to the ridiculous Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, with Frances McDormand in the latter movie and Julie Walters in Billy Elliot somewhere in the middle. Marcia Gay Harden is spot-on in Pollock, but the role of Lee Krasner is clearly a lead, unfairly sandwiched in here-an apple among oranges. As for Miss Hudson, her sole (dubious) distinction is being Goldie Hawn's daughter. And no Erika Christensen, so terrific in Traffic?

Each foreign country is allowed to submit one film; but what if it has two equally good ones that year? Taiwan picked Crouching Tiger over the more deserving Yi Yi, thus increasing the former's chances of losing in two categories. (I hope it does.)

For Best Director we have the ubiquitous Ang Lee; Gladiator's Ridley Scott, a filmmaker with little feel for anything but special effects and visual shocks; Stephen Daldry for the decent but sentimental Billy Elliot; and Steven Soderbergh, whose two nominations-for Erin Brockovich and Traffic-may cancel each other out.

I can see no good reason for separating screen adaptations from original screenplays, except that having two categories gives the Academy more consolation prizes to hand out to filmmakers who didn't make it into the Best Picture category. So the dreary Coen Brothers with their wretched O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Steve Kloves for his slightly better Wonder Boys both get a chance to win (undeservedly), and a bone gets tossed to the deserving Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote as well as directed You Can Count on Me, and can probably count on not winning.

The award for Best Original Score should by rights go to that tireless veteran Ennio Morricone for Malena, if for no other reason than for having composed the best imitation of a score by the late great Nino Rota. Best Cinematography is a category hard to assess now that technology is so evolved that no movie can look bad. I am happy, though, that the brilliant Lajos Koltai was nominated for his superb work on Malena, even if his yet more dazzling work for Sunshine was, like every aspect of that remarkable film, passed over.

None of this should prevent the Oscars from getting their customary enormous worldwide viewership, which of course has nothing to do with art. If movie stars were involved, and the women showed sufficient flesh, mud wrestling would rack up the same ratings.