Place Your Bets

By RICHARD CORLISS, RICHARD SCHIKEL

It's a game that lures millions of sporting souls into the office pools, to figure out the preferences of the 6,500 Motion Picture Academy members. Yet of all the pop-cultural horse races, from the Super Bowl to American Idol, the Oscars are the one we know the least about. Only the winner is announced, not the runner-up or the margin of victory. It's as if all you knew about the 2000 election was, "And the Presidency goes to ... George W. Bush!"

All that withholding creates its own all-or-nothing melodrama. That applies again this year, when some pretty intriguing head-to-head races are shaping up. Can Crash, the quintessential L.A. indie drama, make a stretch run to overtake the early favorite, Brokeback Mountain? Can Hollywood's most dapper leading man, George Clooney, beat out schlumpy but likable Paul Giamatti? Is dark horse Felicity Huffman the one to knock off everyone's darling, Reese Witherspoon? Will anyone catch Philip Seymour Hoffman?

Actors and directors will tell you there's little point in comparing good work in wildly different roles and genres. But most of them profess to enjoy the five-week ride between nominations and Oscar night. Amy Adams, a Supporting Actress contender, says the whirl has been "fast and furious but fun. The three f's."

Fun for her, yes. For those of us watching, this year's Oscar crop is a quiet bunch: very serious and not terribly popular. The absence of a pure audience smash is an X factor that adds to the mystery, the thrill of the gamble. And if you haven't seen all the films, don't worry. We have, and to help guide you through the awards, we're handicapping the races. How did we make our picks? From conversations with Academy insiders and nominees, from our experience of Oscars past and, well, from tea leaves. But use these picks for your Oscar pool at your own risk. Remember, it's not string theory; it's just a game anyone can play.

BEST ACTRESS

REESE WITHERSPOON Walk the Line

WHY SHE GOT THIS FAR: Pert, practical Southern girl plays pert, practical Southern girl and against her better judgment warbles June Carter Cash's songs in her own quite-adequate voice. And, incidentally, she rescues Johnny Cash from his demons without becoming a harpy or an implausibly redemptive angel. It's hard to think of a more winning or comfortably graceful performance last year.

WHY SHE MIGHT NOT WIN: Walk the Line is an agreeable film but also a rather plodding one, fully energized only when Witherspoon is onscreen. Probably that is to her advantage, but the Academy might prefer something darker and meatier and a little nuttier.

WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: Why stop now? Witherspoon has won just about every acting award on offer this time of the year, and her vehicle is, at least, a mainstream studio film, and those are in very short supply on the Academy's list of nominees. Nobody is saying the word lock yet, but she is the front runner.

WHAT WITHERSPOON IS SAYING: As a teenager at a drama camp, she was told by a teacher that she might someday be a good actress but that she should never, ever try to sing in public. She has said that overcoming that "embedded" fear "was a really big accomplishment for me." And it is one that audiences somehow sense and share.

FELICITY HUFFMAN Transamerica

WHY SHE GOT THIS FAR: From desperate housewife to desperate transsexual--it's about as big a reach as any actress attempted in 2005. While it's almost an Oscar cliche to have pretty people shed their glamour and get down, dirty and real, her woman-playing-a-man-who's-trying-to-be-a-woman is a new twist.

WHY SHE MIGHT NOT WIN: It's a wee little road movie, and the story--Huffman plays a man in the last stages of becoming a woman who has to deal with an abandoned son he never knew he had--goes rather improbably sentimental and conventional as it develops. Huffman is a strong, hardworking actress, but she doesn't quite transcend the impression that she's performing a stunt instead of playing a part.

WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: Terrific performance in a picture that has not found an audience. Its transgressiveness doesn't even set it apart in the year of Brokeback Mountain and Capote.

WHAT HUFFMAN IS SAYING: "Nobody has ever been this interested in me before and probably never will be again," she told a British newspaper. "People ask me what my favorite red-carpet moment is, but they might as well ask about my favorite root-canal moment. As a matter of fact, my favorite moment comes at the end of the red carpet, when I take off my $500 shoes and put on the little plastic sandals I keep in my bag."

DRUMROLL PLEASE

Who Will Win: Witherspoon Who Should Win: Witherspoon

BEST ACTOR

HEATH LEDGER Brokeback Mountain

WHY HE GOT THIS FAR: Ennis Del Mar, the taciturn ranch hand with a love he dare not speak, is one of the most implosive and internalized figures ever put onscreen, and Ledger's work is artfully, painfully true to a man who never learns to express, perhaps even to understand, his feelings. As Ledger says, Ennis "was so beautifully complex, and there was so much to tell and so little words to help me tell his story." That's a mountain of a challenge and one that this young Aussie (just 25 years old when he shot the film) heroically scaled.

WHY HE MIGHT NOT WIN: The beauty of the role and of his performance is in their complexities and contradictions. Ennis loves his man and betrays his wife. He confounds an audience's sympathies. Even sophisticated Oscar voters might not care to reward such a confused and confusing figure.

WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: At the Toronto Film Festival, where both Capote and Brokeback Mountain were launched, Ledger's performance was the one that earned the awe. But Academy members want a little showmanship in the roles they recognize (that's why Hustle & Flow's Terrence Howard is another viable contender), and it's Hoffman who is a one-man show.

WHAT LEDGER IS SAYING: "I think that flattery is just as dangerous or destructive as criticism. I think it's all one thing." He's got the flattery, but will he get the Oscar?

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN Capote

WHY HE GOT THIS FAR: He's one of three nominees to play a celebrity from the 1950s (the others: Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line and David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck), but Hoffman dominates his film with an eerie force of personality as surely as Truman Capote commandeered Kansas when he was there researching his seminal book. Hoffman begins by impersonating the writer--nailing his droll, spectacular effeminacy--then infiltrates and inhabits him.

WHY HE MIGHT NOT WIN: An asteroid might destroy Planet Earth.

WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: Capote has won him nearly every award worth taking. He is also commonly described as the leading character actor of his generation but until now was never nominated for an Oscar. That will be not just a reward for a superb performance but also a career-achievement citation.

WHAT HOFFMAN IS SAYING: "You never know what's going to happen on that night. I think we're all going to be sitting there with our heart in our hands." (He acknowledges, though, that he's not exactly rooting for Ledger.) Having spent most of the past couple of months accepting honors for Capote, Hoffman is getting used to the acclaim. "Awards season, I'm finding out, is a long season." It's about to get longer.

DRUMROLL PLEASE

Who Will Win: Hoffman Who Should Win: Ledger

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR AND ACTRESS

PAUL GIAMATTI Cinderella Man

WHY HE GOT THIS FAR: Because Oscar totally overlooked his performance in last year's Sideways. The Academy has a long history of making good on its mistakes by giving a performer a prize for a later, often lesser, work. But there's nothing lesser about Giamatti's shrewd, loyal boxing manager. He is as confident and engaged as Sideways' oenophile was dithering and in retreat.

WHY HE MIGHT NOT WIN: Cinderella Man was the year's most conspicuous and mysterious underperformer.

WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: That he's the sentimental favorite. That he's an actor's actor. But also that the contemporary relevance of Clooney's vehicle trumps the nostalgic pleasures of Giamatti's. And that, of course, he'll get an Oscar someday.

WHAT GIAMATTI IS SAYING: "My money would be on Clooney. Not because I don't think I deserve it. It's just not something I ever anticipated happening in my life."

GEORGE CLOONEY Syriana

WHY HE GOT THIS FAR: The usually suave and gorgeous actor put on weight (literally and figuratively) to play a tormented CIA operative trying to do the right thing in the morally and politically murky Middle East. Clooney is both commanding and sympathetic; his character's confusions and eventual tragedy mirror the region's much larger ones.

WHY HE MIGHT NOT WIN: Through no fault of his, audiences found the movie bewildering and the plot hard to follow and didn't take Syriana to heart. Voters admire cinematic ambition but avert their eyes from commercial failure.

WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: That Clooney, who is well liked in Hollywood for his low-key manner and firm principles, is the front runner. It doesn't hurt his chances either that his love child, Good Night, and Good Luck, has six major nominations but a small chance of winning any of them.

WHAT CLOONEY IS SAYING: "I doubt it. I've been to all the awards shows [and seen who has won]. But it's going to be fun anyway."

DRUMROLL PLEASE

Who Will Win: Clooney Who Should Win: Clooney

AMY ADAMS Junebug

WHY SHE GOT THIS FAR: As Ashley, a North Carolina wife dazzled by a big-city visitor, Adams immediately and lastingly warms the movie. Her down-home roots, and her itch to escape them, are funny and poignant. She's the rare supporting character the leads end up supporting. And Adams gives voters the thrill of discovery.

WHY SHE MIGHT NOT WIN: She copped a slew of critics' awards but so far hasn't won any of the big prizes. Also, she'll be around, won't she? Or was Ashley just one of those happy flukes, the luck of a young actress falling into a part that suited her perfectly?

WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: Hollywood loves stories like Adams'. A refugee from dinner theater in Minnesota, a onetime waitress at Hooters who was fired from two TV pilots, she shows that in the right role she can be magic. It's better than A Star Is Born.

WHAT ADAMS IS SAYING: "I loved Reese Witherspoon. She was just very subtle but effective." On her own category, however, she's mum.

RACHEL WEISZ The Constant Gardener

WHY SHE GOT THIS FAR: Like Adams, she plays a young idealist who loses a baby in childbirth. But Weisz's Tessa Quayle is no homebody; she's a crusader, spitting tacks at the power elite and venturing into the Kenyan wilds on a world-saving mission. Weisz brings her intelligence and ferocity to this banner waver--and displays a sexy humor that shows why her husband would be willing to die for her.

WHY SHE MIGHT NOT WIN: Does she draw viewers into Tessa's humanitarian obsessions, or is the character too spiky to get close to? WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: This category is often the most unpredictable, but she has won the two biggest awards so far. The past three winners have been actresses playing cocksure, take-charge women, and that's an apt description for Weisz's Tessa.

WHAT WEISZ IS SAYING: "Amy Adams is phenomenal. I mean, the tone of it was exquisite--a real tightrope walk. But then Michelle [Williams, in Brokeback Mountain] was incredible. I think they're all amazing. I could argue for any of us winning."

DRUMROLL PLEASE

Who Will Win: Weisz Who Should Win: Adams

CRASH VS. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN BEST MOTION PICTURE

CRASH Paul Haggis, Director

WHY IT GOT THIS FAR: Because it has large ambitions. It's an attempt to catch the spirit of a sprawling city (Los Angeles) through a multilayered, multicultural, multicharacter narrative--as it is reflected through a unique metaphor, traffic accidents. Oscar likes that sort of thing. He also likes the frugality with which Crash was made. Its big-picture feel was created on a relatively small budget by a first-time director whose energy, conviction and authentic concern for human behavior--granted, some of it slightly cliched--override his occasional failures of technique.

WHY IT MIGHT STOP HERE: People either like the movie or loathe it. There isn't much middle ground on which compromisers can take a stand. And despite the fact that it contains a lot of fine acting by the likes of Matt Dillon and Terrence Howard, it is too wide-ranging to really draw you into the lives it recounts.

WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: That it is a movie Angelenos--who constitute the Academy's majority--perhaps like and identify with more than the rest of the country does. There's a sense of a little Crash boomlet beginning to crest on the West Coast. And that might cause a surprise on March 5.

WHAT ITS MAKERS ARE SAYING: An executive at Lionsgate, Crash's distributor, thought the tough job for his picture was getting it nominated. He was convinced that once voters saw it, Crash would have a good shot. So its Oscar campaign has consisted largely of a DVD blizzard of unprecedented size, which director Haggis thinks may be a new promotional paradigm. Nonetheless, he's aware that initially "people hated the politics of it, hated what I was saying and hated the filmmaking," and he doesn't believe that the more positive word of mouth that developed later will be able to overcome that early response. He expects "to be applauding Ang" Lee and Brokeback on the big night.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN Ang Lee, Director

WHY IT GOT THIS FAR: It isn't a feel-good movie. But it is a movie it feels good to vote for: attractive representatives of a discriminated-against minority find a few moments of happiness in a more repressive America before tragedy claims them. Now, in a somewhat more enlightened era, we are made to feel pity and even a touch of terror for them. Shrewdly positioned as a romance rather than a message movie, Brokeback comes at us quietly. We really like these guys--one rough-hewn and silent, the other eager and somewhat unformed--and the picture's unforced, almost casual realization keeps us sympathetically involved with them even when their fates lead them into uncharted territory.

WHY IT MIGHT STOP HERE: The Academy remains a somewhat conservative body, and although this is a handsome and superbly acted film, it may not yet wish to endorse that "gay cowboy" movie. The film is also rather inarticulate--to some, one of its most touching strengths--and traditionally the Academy has preferred entertainments that state their business with a big thumping inspirational speech that is never spoken here.

WHAT THE BUZZ IS SAYING: That the competition this year is not strong, that Brokeback was perhaps the best-reviewed movie of the year and that Middle America has accepted it with surprising equanimity. Some sense in it the potential for a multiaward sweep.

WHAT ITS MAKERS ARE SAYING: "I'm terrified because I'm getting a lot of attention, and I'm always a little shy," says director Lee. "It's comforting, because if I don't win, then [all the attention] is not going to be my problem." So is he confident that his movie will win? "No," he says, laughing. But he's enjoying the process. "This is a good bunch. I've been in this round before, but this is the most pleasant year. These are good guys. "

DRUMROLL PLEASE

Who Will Win: Brokeback Mountain Who Should Win: Crash

With reporting by Clayton Neuman/New York, Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles