Movie staff make their Oscar picks

By JULIE MIDDLETON

If the staff at the Rialto Cinema in Newmarket are on the money, Peter Jackson will walk away with the best director Oscar today for Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but not best film. They're tipping Lost in Translation, a Japan-set romantic comedy starring Bill Murray.

Whale Rider star Keisha Castle-Hughes, they reckon, will be hard-pressed to fight off Charlize Theron (Monster) and Samantha Morton (In America) for the best actress award.

But they admit it's hard to be objective with New Zealand talent featuring in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominations like never before.
Paul Rose, 45, the manager of the five-screen cinema, reckons his heart says that Keisha Castle-Hughes should win the best actress gong.

"I think it's really nice that the Academy has recognised that this 13-year-old was so amazing in Whale Rider, but she is up against [veterans] Diane Keaton, Samantha Morton, Charlize Theron and Naomi Watts. My brain says Charlize Theron."

Several of his cinema attendants - they tend to be arts students and keen film fans working part-time - take more cynical view of Theron's likely win for her portrayal of hooker Aileen Carol Wuornos, who was executed for killing seven men in Florida during the 1980s.

"It tends to be if you put on weight, pretend to be another sex, or somehow transform yourself, you get an Oscar," says actress and aspiring film-maker Kirsty Hamilton, 31.

Well, it worked for Nicole Kidman, who was last year's best actress after wearing a false nose for the The Hours, a grim flick about troubled writer Virginia Woolf.

But it will be some time before we can see whether Keisha is a match for Charlize - Monster isn't released in New Zealand until late March. But such is pre-Oscar hype and internet information that you could be persuaded that it's already playing.

Other films which got an Oscar nomination but not yet released in New Zealand include House of Sand and Fog, for which Ben Kingsley has a best actor nomination; it opens on March 18.

The teenage angst-ridden film Thirteen, for which Holly Hunter has a best supporting actress nomination, isn't even on the horizon. Nor is The Cooler?, which has gained Alec Baldwin a best supporting actor nod.

Film release dates, says Paul Rose, are up to distributors, and they have their own arcane strategies about the best times to launch in different parts of the world.

The Rialto crew are unanimous about Jackson taking out best director, but don't think he'll be getting a gong for the film itself.

"The Academy are not too hot on awarding fantasy films," he says.

American-born Kate Butterfield, a 20-year-old anthropology student, agrees, adding that the film's home in New Zealand might have been counting against it in the last two years it has been nominated but unsung.

"I think Hollywood has been denying it," she says. "But they can't deny it any longer. It's an incredible achievement."

She also points out that various other awards - like Jackson's best director gong from the Directors Guild of America - often presage what happens on Oscar day.

Lost in Translation is another favourite among this group, which tips Bill Murray to take best actor. Says Paul Rose: "He has the ability to just raise an eyebrow to make you laugh."

Free films are the major perk of cinema work, but not while on the job. Long gone are the days when ushers - that word has now been retired, says Paul Rose - sat in the cinema during every screening, torch on lap, ears alert for Jaffas rolling on wooden floors.

But the movie-watching perk isn't always a good thing, says communications student Shana Cameron, 22, who sees about 50 films a year: you become less discriminating when you're not forking out $14 each time.

"I would never have seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre otherwise," she confesses. "It was terrible!"

If Shana Cameron had to pick an anti-Oscar - a worst film of last year - Chainsaw Massacre would be it. Legally Blonde II, a blonde joke taken to the screen, comes a close second.

Kate Butterfield chooses The Matrix III as her anti-Oscar , describing it as "such a lesson in how a trilogy can go wrong". Underworld, a flick about the worlds of werewolves and vampires, is "laughable, it was so bad".

Today, staff at the Rialto and its wider family, Village Sky City, will be hoping that their picks of the best will scoop the in-house Oscars sweepstake.

Tonight, Kate Butterfield is hosting an Oscar evening for 10 friends at her Ponsonby flat - it's a family tradition from her American childhood to which she has introduced friends.

They'll all be betting on the winners, but she isn't expecting her investment back: "I do a lot of sentimental voting..."