By LOU LUMENICK - Post Movie Critic
February 26, 2007
The red carpet at the Kodak Theatre hasn’t even been rolled up, and Tinseltown is already talking about next year’s Oscar race.
That would be the Best Picture cliffhanger between a big-screen version of the Broadway musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" - starring Johnny Depp and Meryl Streep - and "Charlie Wilson’s War," an Afghanistan-themed political drama with two other Hollywood heavyweights, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.
Or maybe, experts say, the big showdown will come down to Steven Soderbergh’s "Che," showcasing Benicio Del Toro as the Cuban-guerrilla leader, and Ridley Scott’s ’60s Harlem crime saga "American Gangster," starring Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington.
Others are anticipating a duel for the gold that would pit "His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass" - the first installment in a pricey "Lord of the Rings"- style fantasy franchise with Nicole Kidman as the villain - against "The Golden Age," in which Cate Blanchett reprises her Oscar-nominated role as England’s first Queen Elizabeth.
Welcome to Hollywood’s version of fantasy baseball, where insiders try to dope out the Oscar prospects of films that largely haven’t been completed, or in some cases don’t have a confirmed release date - or even a U.S. distributor.
During Oscar Week a year ago, DreamWorks and Paramount invited press to the set of the still-filming "Dreamgirls," which was then rated as the one to beat for Best Picture. (It didn’t even get nominated.)
The other unseen favorite at that point was "Flags of Our Fathers," which didn’t make it into the final five either. "Letters from Iwo Jima," the other Clint Eastwood picture that did get nominated, wasn’t even on the 2007 schedule.
One veteran Oscar campaigner has a list of 45 possible Best Picture contenders for next year, which, the consultant says, looks "very weak" at this point.
"It’s a big list, but it’s not a very clear list in any way," says David Poland, who tracks Oscar contenders at his Movie City News Web site. "Every year, two or three movies jump out at you, but this year that’s not true. ‘Sweeney Todd’ has the size and Johnny Depp and Meryl Streep, both of whom the Academy love, but director Tim Burton is not exactly Oscar bait."
