Comment: best picture.(The Talk of the Town)(campaigning for the Oscar)

In 1989, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, wishing to minimize the wounded feelings that can accompany being tagged a loser, changed the formula by which the envelope-rippers announce the recipients of the Oscars. The federal bureaucracy, always a bit behind the Hollywood curve, took more than a decade to catch up: not until the 2000 election did Washington get around to ditching the old, hurtful custom of having the voters say "And the winner is . . ." and replacing it with a more sensitive practice, whereby a group of chosen judges, wearing gowns that a Price Waterhouse accountant would die for, consult themselves and then announce, "And the Presidency goes to . . ."

For the movie industry, it's been a rough political season. Campaign spending is through the roof. According to one estimate, by the time the polls close on Tuesday the studios will have shelled out a record sixty million dollars for full-page newspaper ads, billboards, videotape and DVD mailings, and other promotional goodies. That may not sound like much -- Michael Bloomberg paid more last fall for a four-year lease on City Hall -- but it's thirty times the reported production budget for "In the Bedroom," one of the contenders for Best Picture. And the Oscar electorate is a lot smaller than the mayoral one: fewer than six thousand people have the franchise. At these per-vote prices, a Presidential campaign would cost a trillion dollars.

And that's just the "hard money." Hollywood has "soft money," too. Academy rules ban filmmakers from giving parties for Academy members and forbid studios to hold screenings that "feature the live participation of the film's artists before or after the screening" or include "receptions, buffets or other refreshments" -- even a lousy bag of popcorn. But if somebody else throws the party, or if non-Academy riffraff are also invited to the screening, then bring on the caviar and the stars. In other words, "independent expenditures" are O.K. So is negative campaigning. This year, "A Beautiful Mind," a front-runner in the big categories, has been the main target. The critics long ago pointed out that the film pretties up the facts about the real-life mathematician on whom the Russell Crowe character is based. Lately, though, anonymous leaks to the Drudge Report and other outlets of dubious respectability have "revealed" some nasty things which the mathematician (who, at the time, was in the grip of schizophrenic delusions that had him convinced he was the emperor of Antarctica) did and said, and which are omitted from the film. Crowe himself has been slammed for loutish behavior at an earlier awards ceremony. The "character issue" is big this year, both for source material and for actors, if not for what's actually on the screen. Meanwhile, the celebrity endorsements are flowing in, with Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson throwing their support behind Denzel Washington against Crowe. And three of the movie colony's most prominent ethnic groups -- Brits, African-American superstars, and hobbits -- have been jostling for position. Oscar politics ain't beanbag.