Jolly Oscar

Bright lights for awards night

Oscar has something to smile about. Not only did 1982 set a record for movie box-office grosses ($3.4 billion), but judging by the Academy Award nominations announced last week, it was a vintage year for pictures and performances as well. By and large, the nominated were both predictable and respectable. Three Best Picture nominees dominated the Academy's voting: Sir Richard Attenborough's epic Gandhi with eleven nominations; Tootsie, directed by Sydney Pollack, with ten; and Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial with nine. (The other contenders for Best Picture: Sidney Lumet's The Verdict and Constantin Costa-Gavras' Missing.)

Jessica Lange's name cropped up twice, making her the only such double designee in 40 years. She is on the Best Supporting Actress ballot for Tootsie and on the one for Best Actress for her role in Frances. Her probable chief rival for the award as Best Actress will be Meryl Streep, nominated, as expected, for Sophie's Choice. Perhaps the strongest category is Best Actor, which this year promises a tight competition, free of Hollywood sentimentality and the tradition of awarding nominations to make up for past oversights. The nominees are Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, Paul Newman in The Verdict, Peter O'Toole in My Favorite Year, Jack Lemmon in Missing and Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.

The list of nominees turned up a few surprises. Based on the seven nominations for Blake Edwards' Victor/Victoria, the Academy seems ready to forgive Edwards for his 1981 satire on Hollywood, S.O.B. And for the fifth spot in the Best Director category, the nominators picked a name virtually out of the blue -- or, rather, out of the deep --Wolfgang Petersen, the young German film maker who directed Das Boot. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.