This year's Oscar nominations: biopics, boxing, and a close-fought rivalry

This year, the Academy Awards has something it hasn't had in ages: A neck-and-neck race for Best Picture.

The nominations for the 77th annual Oscar ceremony, announced Tuesday morning, pitted "Million Dollar Baby," a boxing movie with a third-act plot twist that not even M. Night Shyamalan could have predicted, against "The Aviator," a biopic of Howard Hughes that celebrates vintage American capitalism during Hollywood's golden age.

In the end, it will be a closely fought contest between two veteran directors from opposite coasts. One is the don of filmmakers from the mean streets of New York. The other is an iconic actor from the clean streets of Carmel, Calif.

Yet for all their differences, Martin Scorsese ("The Aviator") and Clint Eastwood ("Million Dollar Baby") have each forged careers out of assaying the wild frontiers of America, places where the moral fabric of society is tested as men struggle to do the right thing.

"The best films are the ones that can find uplifting messages in dark material, and 'The Aviator' and 'Million Dollar Baby' exemplify that," says Dave Karger, the resident Oscar expert at Entertainment Weekly. "Movies that Oscar voters are attracted to often have an element of redemption."

In "The Aviator," it's the character of Howard Hughes, owner of an airline company, who has to overcome personal demons even as he fights a competitor that has a powerful senator in its pocket. "Million Dollar Baby" climaxes with a scene in which a man has to make a terrible choice and live with the moral consequences.

For the Academy, the choice of Best Picture and Best Director will be a pick between two larger-than-life personalities.

Start with Clint Eastwood, a man whose piercing squint can fell a man within 100 paces. In person and in character, the grizzled Californian's slow drawl belies how quick he is on the draw - during a recent Awards function speech, the Republican told Michael Moore that if Mr. Moore ever showed up on his doorstep with a camera, he'd kill him. That curmudgeonly demeanor explains why no one ever questioned Mr. Eastwood's masculinity when he wore a poncho in a Western. Yet his face of weathered parchment wears an easy smile. His humble humor has served him well as an actor - Eastwood has been nominated this year in the Best Actor category - and endeared him to the Academy, which awarded him Best Picture and Best Director for 1992's "Unforgiven."

By contrast, Martin Scorsese is renowned for his effusiveness. The New Yorker isn't tall enough for most roller-coaster rides, but his stature in the industry is that of a titan, an intellectual whose eyebrows crinkle every time he taps his encyclopedic knowledge of film history. Yet the filmmaker threatens to become the Susan Lucci of the Oscars: He's been nominated for Best Director four times previously, but has yet to win.

"Million Dollar Baby" has seven nominations - a number matched by "Finding Neverland," the story of "Peter Pan" author J.M. Barrie - but come Oscar night, "Million Dollar Baby" may find itself on a rocky road rather than the road to "Rocky"-style glory. Sylvester Stallone's boxing epic won Best Picture in 1976, but since then, films about the contact sport haven't done well financially or at the Oscars. Mr. Scorsese's "Raging Bull" was the last boxing movie to be nominated in the Best Picture category and it lost to "Ordinary People" in 1980.

Scorsese has his best shot yet with "The Aviator," a front-runner with a total of 11 nominations. The movie has all the elements Academy voters tend to gravitate towards: It's an epic with great sweep.

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