Once an evening of backslapping and merrymaking within the narrow confines of Hollywood, the Academy Awards this time look like a UN exercise in diversity.

 

The 79th annual Oscars yesterday feature their most ethnically varied line-up ever, with stars and stories that reflect the growing multiculturalism taking root around the globe.

 

Competing for best picture was Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel, a sweeping ensemble drama. The film's cast ranges from A-listers such as Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett to comparative unknowns Adriana Barraza from Mexico and Rinko Kikuchi from Japan, who both earned supporting-actress nominations for Babel.

 

Also in the running were Stephen Frears' classy British saga The Queen, a portrait of the royal family in crisis, and Clint Eastwood's Japanese-language war tale Letters From Iwo Jima.

 

Those films joined two idiosyncratic American stories nominated for best picture, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' road comedy Little Miss Sunshine and Martin Scorsese's crime epic The Departed.

 

Though set among the distinctive cops and mobsters of Boston, The Departed had a global connection itself. The film was based on the Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs.

 

Of the 20 acting nominees, five were black, two were Hispanic and one was Asian, while only two Americans Eastwood and Scorsese were among the five best-director contenders.

 

With a Directors Guild of America award and other top film honors behind him, Scorsese was considered a shoo-in to earn the directing Oscar, a prize that has eluded him throughout his illustrious career.

 

There were clear front-runners in all four acting categories, as well: Forest Whitaker as Ugandan leader Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland and Helen Mirren as Elizabeth II in The Queen for the lead-acting trophies, Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson as soul singers in Dreamgirls for the supporting honors.

 

The best-picture race was up for grabs, though, with all five films in the running but many Oscar watchers generally figuring it was a three-way race among Babel, The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine.

 

Organizers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hope the suspense of the wide-open best-picture category will help offset moviegoers' relative lack of interest in the competing films.

 

TV ratings for the Oscars tend to be lower when fewer people have seen the top nominees.

 

Collectively, the five best-picture nominees had drawn a total domestic theatrical audience of about 38.5 million people, about a third the number of fans who have gone to see the contenders in recent peak years when such blockbusters as Gladiator or The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King have won.

 

(China Daily February 26, 2007)