Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Of By David Baker Entertainment Editor Monday night's 51st annual Academy Awards ceremony will be special for many reasons: it will mark the 75th anniversary of Hollywood filmmaking, and all of the nominees for Best Actor and Best Actress have announced their plans to attend. Also, each of the five tunes nominated for Best Original Song will be performed at the ceremony by the artist who introduced it. The fact that almost every J?> %v ^MHnf Voight and Fonda i nominee is planning to attend the ceremony is an indication that each one considers himself a potential winner. There are two sure bets, in the races for Best Director and Best Supporting Actor, but the remaining races are hard, if not downright impossible, to call. The Las Vegas oddsmakers have installed The Deer Hunter and Heaven Can Wait as co-favorites to win Best Picture, and there are several good reasons for predicting i?arh nf thf?m tn win The Deer Hunter has already won the New York P'ilin Critics Association award for Best Picture of the year, while Heaven Can Wait won the same prize at this year's Golden Globe Awards. It's no secret that Universal Pictures is relying on the Oscars to catapult The Deer Hunter to the big grosses that that Heaven Car Wait has already achieved ($10( million, so far). The three-houi movie was not even released t( most of the country until it gar nered its nine nominations. Win ning the Best Picture Oscar wil make The Deer Hunter a hit just aj sure as losing it will make th< * movie a flop. Strangely enough, the movie thai will decide the outcome of the Besl Picture competition is one of the three nominees that don't stand a chance of winning ? Coming Home. Like The Deer Hunter, Coming Home is about the Vietnam War, and unlike The Deer Hunter, Coming Home became a financial success long before it received its Oscar nominations (eight in all). Considering those n 'Coming Home' facts, chances are good thai Coming Home will siphon ofl enough votes from The Deer SI||n#??r? fA oilAtit /-1 *' lu aiiun ileuvcii v an wail to win the Oscar. The other Best Picture nominees are Midnight Express, which received six nominations, and An Unmarried Woman, which received a total of four mentions. Prediction: Heaven Can Wait Preference: Heaven Can Wait The nominees for Best Actor this year are Warren Beatty (Heaven Can Wait), Gary Busey (The Buddy Holly Story), Robert DeNiro (The Deer Hunter), Laurence Olivier (The Boys From Brazil) and Jon Voight (Coming Home). Las Vegas says that Olivier will win, but that prediction is surely going to cost the casinos a lot of money. Olivier is already being honored with a special Oscar for his lifetime contributions to the i? -- " - - - - uiuuMiy, SO 11 s aououui that the Academy will honor him twice in 1-7C\ I J7 ; one evening. That The Boys From i Brazil was one of 1978's biggest ) bombs can hardly help his chances, either. ) Beatty, DeNiro and Voight are the nominees with the best chances of winning. Voight was honored 1 with the Best Actor award at the ? 1978 Cannes Film Festival, but that ; was before Heaven Can Wait and The Deer Hunter were released, t Still, in my opinion, Voight's was t the best performance of the year, i and I hope that he wins. i What probably will happen, ; though, is that DeNiro's performanrp in thp nthpr uiar onin will cause a split among the voters who favor drama over comedy, and Beatty will sneak in and take the prize. Prediction: Warren Beatty Preference: Jon Voight Just as the race for Best Actor has three strong nominees, so does the race for Best Actress: Ingrid Bergman (Autumn Sonata), Jill Clayburgh (An Unmarried Woman) and Jane Fonda (Coming Home). Jane Fonda will probably win, and if she does, it will not be for her performance in Coming Home alone. An award for Fonda would i - ? - - - - t?e recognition tor the body of the work stretching from Julia right up to Comes A Horseman and California Suite. As far as that thought goes, Fonda's performance in The China Syndrome will not hurt her chances, either. Jill Clayburgh has appeared in only one film during the past year, An Unmarried Woman, and her performance in it is unquestionably the year's best. But Clayburgh has never been nominated before, and that's a fact that may hurt her. Ingrid Bergman is the sen timental favorite for Best Actress. She's Las Vegas' favorite as well, and I would not be surprised to see her win ? after all, she's a threetime Oscar winner, and she has just announced her retirement. Ellen Burstyn (Same Time, Next Year) and Geraldine Page (Interiors) will have to wait until next year. I Prediction: Jane Fonda Preference: Jill Clayburgh Fear: Ingrid Bergman Nominated for Best Supporting Actor are Bruce Dern (Coming Home), Richard Farnsworth (Comes A Horseman), John Hurt (Midnight Express), Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter) and Jack Warden (Heaven Can Wait). Best Supporting Actor is the only acting category of the year with a clear-cut winner. Chrisopher Walken's performance in The beer Hunter is one the most riveting portrayals in history, and it's hard to imagine him losing the award to anvone Prediction: Christopher Walken Preference: Christopher Walken Jill Clay burgh in 'Ai Penelope Milford (Coming Home), Maureen Stapleton (Interiors) and Meryl Streep (The Deer Hunter)all turned in excellent performances this year, but the competition for Best Supporting Actress is between Dyan Cannon, for her portrayal of the paranoid murderess in Heaven Can Wait, and Maggie Smith, for her ironic portrayal of the bitchy Oscar nominee in California Suite. Each lady's movie was a boxoffice bonanza and each one's performance was the highlight of uci icapctuvc mill, so cnoosing between the two is something that I'd just as soon put off until Tuesday morning. A sweep for Heaven Can Wait, though, would ensure the award for Cannon, and since I'm predicting Heaven Can Wait to be the evening's big winner, I'll have to agree with Las Vegas that Cannon will be a winner, too. Prediction: Dyan Cannon Preference: Dyan Cannon Choosing the winner of the Best Director award is easy, though all Miwmm r^:%.'^r ; L/*~;. ?S?I Hpf Jk^PJI^^H Jf K Ji Warren Beatty in 'I 71Jnmamed Woman' of the nominees ? Woody Allen (Interiors), Hal Ashby (Coming Home), Warren Beatty and Buck Henry (Heaven Can Wait), Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter) and Alan Parker (Midnight Express) ? are deserving of the award. Michael Cimino has been named Best Director of 1978 by the Director's Guild of America (DGA), and the Academy's choice has differed from the DGA's only twice in the.DGA's 29-year history. I would prefer any of the other nnminonc U...4 :A?_ ? ..u.??ivvo v oavc i an ltd ;, UUl It S U lost cause. Prediction: Michael Cimino Preference: Hal Ashby In the awards for technical achievements, Days of Heaven, Terrence Mallick's beautiful bore, See Academy Awards, page 18 Heaven Can Wait'