There are only two truly deserving contenders for this particular prize this year, and both were not only written by but are about people from across the icy, white-capped Atlantic. Saying this, I realize, elbows aside Sofia Coppola and LOST IN TRANSLATION, which is all about some morose, hotel-bound Americans and a bunch of Japanese wack jobs, but it's a five-way race and somebody's gotta come in third...right?

I've never said TRANSLATION is shit -- it's got a certain specialness but in a watercolor, tiny-canvas sort of way -- but as far as I can gather the beloved daughter of Francis wrote a relatively spare script (around 80 pages, I read somewhere) with lots of breathing room that would have probably...let's be candid about this ...pretty much laid there without the improvs, comic and otherwise, of the inspirationally cast Bill Murray.

And while I'm a respectful fan of Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson and David Reynolds' FINDING NEMO script as well as Denys Arcand's for THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS, I'm having trouble seeing how the term "truly Oscar-worthy" fits in.

One of the deserving B.O.S. finalists is Steven Knight's DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, a very finely threaded, quietly compassionate work that was the basis for the excellent Stephen Frears film. The other is IN AMERICA, a touching tale of an Irish immigrant family struggling to survive in a strange and turbulent New York City and patch up old wounds in the bargain, co-written and directed by Jim with his usual alacrity and panache.

Which is better? I would be satisfied if either screenplay wins the prize, but it would feel wrong as hell if neither one is chosen.

I could make the argument that IN AMERICA is a deeply personal piece of work. It's about something that really hurts and needs healing as opposed to a situation born of apartness or alienation or homesickness, which aren't, in my opinion, terribly serious afflictions, or at least not ones that touch me where I live.

Sheridan's film leaks feeling like a rowboat hull that needs tarring, and it eventually sinks into a lake of its own emotional creation in such a way that doesn't feel like an envelopment as much as an act of completion or fulfillment. That's how I feel about it, anyway.

Irishman Expounds

Personally I'd rather see Sheridan get the Oscar for the simple fact that he's a proven artist, a multiple but so-far-denied Oscar nominee (for the direction and screenplays of MY LEFT FOOT and IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER), a passionate filmmaker and a helluva good guy to hang and shoot the shit with.

Yup, you got it -- I'm prejudiced in his favor. Sardonic but warm-hearted Irish guys with reedy Dublin accents and all kinds of fascinating things to say about childhood tragedy, emotional strategies on-set, writing on airplanes, Daniel Day Lewis, Richard Harris and so on....okay, I'm a sucker. I've got British blood and I've been to Ireland, and one of the first things I said to myself as I drove from Dublin to Galway was, "I could die here."

The usual terms -- "flavorful," "musical," "inimitable" -- don't do justice to the feeling you get from listening to Sheridan's speaking voice. It's deep and piercing, but at the same time gentle, whimsical, sing-song-y. Sometimes you have to lean and ask him to spell this or that because those emotional Irish vowels often overtake the consonants and it's like, "Whaat?" But the basic experience is rich.

I love the way he pronounces Ago, the popular industry eatery on Melrose. He calls it "Aahhh-go."

There are between 30 and 40 separate and distinct Irish accents all together, Sheridan informs. (Dublin, Belfast, Wicklow, Kildare, Galway, Cork...you get the drift.) He acted out a few for my benefit, or maybe just for fun of it. Ryan O'Neal's accent in BARRY LYNDON, he told me, was from Kerry "but he didn't really get it right." Daniel Day Lewis's in THE BOXER was out of Belfast, and so on.

My only real beef with IN AMERICA was the casting of Paddy Considine as the father. I respect the fact that others respect his talent, and that he's real on screen, but I don't relate or something. I don't like his flat face and those tiny little pig eyes, and I didn't like the way he did his "fee fi fo fum" seduction routine with Samantha Morton in the film and...well, enough.

I would have preferred Daniel Day Lewis in the part, is what I'm really saying, which would have probably been a good fit, with Lewis and Sheridan's pooled talents having made history twice before. However....

"The way my relationship with Daniel is...I would always ask him...it's a matter of kerrtesy...I didn't want to ask him outright because I didn't want to get refewsed, in a way," Sheridan said during a breakfast we had on Tuesday morning at West Hollywood's Chateau Marmont.

"Years and years ago, somewhere between IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER and THE BOXER, I showed him the script, and he never came back to me and said I really like it, you know? I don't think he disliked it, exactly...I just don't think it caught his imagination. So I didn't push it."

Sheridan says he isn't into exact emotional choreography or loading a movie down with anything too pre-ordained.

"Generally when I'm writin' a script, I always imagine the actor's face,:" he says. "I also imagine my own as well...I say it over to myself, in my head.

"But if I read a script, an American script...usually I'm sayin', there's too much writin'. There's too many words and not enough space for anyone to just have a reaction.

(You could say, yes, that Sofia Coppola was looking to precisely avoid this syndrome with her sparely-written LOST IN TRANSLATION script. It's just that I don't think what she accomplished amounts to anything profound.)

"There are two styles of directin'," Sheridan explains. "One I would call Hitchcock-style visual organization... marks, camera pre-planned, everything worked out as a visual alphabet. And then there's the other style that says the camera isn't God, and we're not God, and that what we get, we get...like channeling, by accident, from something else.

"It doesn't matter so much where the camera is, but that the emotions in the scene are real...really real...not like actors hitting this mark and maybe fakin' it on some level...and this is kind of like what I'm gohin' fahr these days."

Especially so with IN AMERICA, he says, because "in the context of my brother and his death, it's almost like bringin' people back to life."

The screenplay is dedicated "to Frankie," Sheridan's brother who died at age 10 from a brain tumor caused by a fall down the stairs. This is referenced early in the film when we're told the immigrant family (played by Considine, Morton and two perfectly chosen child actresses, Sarah and Emma Bolger) that they've lost a son and a brother named Frankie, who died from the same thing.

What happened, exactly? Sheridan's mother, he says, had "put up a gate at the top of the stairs to stop a [child] from goin' down the stairs...and [Frankie] leapt over it and went straight down on his head, and I came home and my mother was holdin' him...he was all black and blue....

"And when I saw this I felt two things. I had huge empathy for him and of course, I felt the fear, but my mother was holdin' him so...it was like the Pieta...that it was almost me rather than Frankie who was goin' cold inside."

I had just re-watched a few days earlier, for the eighth or ninth time, Richard Harris in THIS SPORTING LIFE, one of all-time favorite films, which led to my asking Sheridan about working with Harris on THE FIELD (1990).

"It was [Harris's] first film in six or seven years," Sheridan recalls, "and he had went off the drink, and he was so nervous on the first day of the shoot, that he collapsed. He went back to his hotel and he was fine after that. But we didn't get along for a period during the shoot...

"Now, it was only my second film, and me and Daniel had gotten along fine, and Brenda Frickert had gotten along...I think what it was, nobody had ever...he was such a fearsome character that he would never hold back. You've got 200 people behind the camera and you've got one star in front of it, and the star does something you don't agree with, and you say 'no' and they say 'yes'...and if they should keep on their way, what do you do?

"I'm not sure if he was right or wrong, or if I was right or wrong...but I know he wanted to be loved in that part."

Sheridan has been in Los Angeles for a while and making the promotional rounds. He was at the Santa Barbara Film Festival last week, and was by far the most entertaining voice on the screenwriter's panel. Everyone seems to recognize his value, and they all seem to want to pay tribute by coming over and saying hello. That's Oscar season for you, of course, but the affection and respect for Sheridan is obvious.

Russell Crowe recently called and left a message, he says, but Sheridan wasn't able to get back to him. He then told me he'd like Crowe to think about starring in his next film, the substance of which he asked me not to discuss.

He said he'd be at the Cannes Film Festival next May, celebrating (I think he said) his 32nd wedding anniversary, and asked me to ring if I'm there myself.

We started talking about how much popular indie films tend to make (the low to mid $20 million range is considered a good score). This eventually led to a discussion of Niki Caro's WHALE RIDER. Sheridan said he thought it was only a pretty good film for the most part, but then decided it was great when the beached whales appeared in the third act.

"If you took that story and made, like, another version of it with the whales on the beach very early on...not changin' it but more like a re-structurin'...it would've been somethin' much more."

Sheridan has only directed five films since he began directing at age 39 or so, about 14 or 15 years ago. I took him seven or eight years to get the IN AMERICA script just right. I asked him if all the major points of a script -- arc, theme, story, resolution -- had ever come to him quickly, in a matter of hours or days, say.

"It happened to me on MY LEFT FOOT," he says. "After doin' a few drafts I just went on a plane, and I...I had to get it done quickly, and I got on the plane and just started writin' on a pad. I was on page 50, typed, and I wrote from page 50 to the end. On a six-hour journey I wrote [what amounted to] 50 typed pages....and I was cryin' and put my coat over my head so no one would notice."

An okay anecdote, but it doesn't quite work as an ending, does it?

Passion Time

The want-to-see on Mel Gibson's THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST is "through the roof," according to a colleague who's read a recent National Research Group tracking report. It opens two and half weeks from now, on Wednesday February 25th, and it'll finally be shown to critics four or five days earlier, with a stipulation that no one reviews it until opening day. So don't look for any leaks or early blasts from this end.

Surprise

I hated the title of MIRACLE (Disney, opening today) at first sight -- waay too on-the-nose. I hated the one-sheet even more. Another ecstatic athlete rearing back in in a moment of Rocky-esque triumph....meaning another rah-rah sports movie about an underdog team pulling off a big win. A tired slogan that says, "If you believe in yourself, anything can happen." Another that says, "The story of the greatest moment in sports history"...and who's the judge of that? "Greatest" in what way, by what criteria?

Forget the one-sheet. Forget my cynicism, or yours if it exists. MIRACLE isn't what you or I would call a miraculous achievement, but it's a damned effective one. It doesn't re-invent the wheel or add something brash or stunning to the feel-good sports movie, but for what it is, it's very well done and definitely hits the mark.

Why? Restraint, skill, pushing the emotional material with just the right amount of emphasis, fantastic editing, a cast of no-names to play the athletes, and the best Kurt Russell performance in a long, long time -- perhaps his best ever.

Russell plays Herb Brooks, the legendarily gruff and taciturn University of Minnesota hockey coach who was hired by U.S. Olympic officials in June of 1979 to slap together a competitive eam to compete in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid. The "miracle" is that the team, made up of kids who averaged age 21, wound up kicking the asses of the undefeated Russians, which no one in the sports universe thought was remotely possible.

By conventional emoting standards, Russell's performance is about as constipated and inexpressive as can be imagined....and yet he's very moving. The feeling he expresses doesn't exactly seep out -- it excretes like sweat. No gush, no tears, no hugs. This is a hard-eyed, military-style drill sergeant who tells his players he wants to win games and not make friends, but when Russell wants you to feel what this guy is going through in the tough moments, you really do feel it.

The stuff he shows when the climactic win finally comes is amazing. It amounts to one of the most deeply cathartic moments I've had with a film or a performer in months, if not years.

MIRACLE is not short (two hours, 15 minutes), but it doesn't feel in the least bloated or indulgent. O'Connor keeps things brisk while showing us the selection and training of these game young hockey players, played against the backdrop of late '70s culture and politics (gas lines, Jimmy Carter, U.S. hostages in Iran, etc.).

There's a distinct current of jingoistic sentiment underneath this film, as the big game between the U.S. and Soviet teams is played up by the media (and by O'Connor) as a politically-charged contest that recalls the baggage carried by the Joe Louis-Max Schmelling heavyweight championship figth of 1938 (a story that I just saw re-told in Barak Goodman's THE FIGHT, which will turn up on PBS sometime later this year).

O'Connor isn't selling a triumph-over-the-Russki's story as much as the notion that Americans can be very, very good when the chips are down and their spirit is aroused. The only thing I don't like about this film is my certain knowledge that George Bush & Co. will love it also, because it appeals to a certain pure-of-heart, "yea team!" innocence that some Americans love embracing and carrying around as their spiritual flag, but which somehow gets turned around as a right-wing, flag-waving thing.

O'Connor has really cut his teeth with this one. I believe it's going to do very, very well commercially, for one thing. And its success is going to instantly elevate O'Connor into the big leagues that John Lee Hancock found himself in after delivering '02's equally satisfying THE ROOKIE.

Ohio!

"As a resident of Columbus, Ohio, I found your Word quip about the Central Ohio Film Critics Awards pretty hilarious. I've lived here since I was nine, and have been obsessing about movies since I was around fourteen, and I had no idea the COFC even existed. As far as I know, Frank Gabrenya of the COLUMBUS DISPATH is the only critic in town with a paying gig, and I learned long ago to ignore everything he writes.

"The thing that bothers me is that we have a very respectable selection of independent films opening here every week -- albeit a month or two later than either coast-- but the level of sophistication of the average moviegoer or critic is terrifyingly low. Is this indicative of the rest of the world, or is it just a cow-town mentality? I'd love to hear your insight.

"For the past four years or so, your column is the only one I've read consistently and taken seriously. One of the first columns I read had a piece about you walking out of some shitty movie or another, and I was hooked. Please don't let the recent wave of LOTR-lovers and right-wing tools writing in dampen your integrity." -- Randall Pullen

Formerly Liberal?

"Is it just me, or do people like Ms. Nicole DuMoulin frequently (and always stridently) announce that they are 'former liberals'? I just don't know any former liberals that can honestly say they are arch-conservative, Bush loving anythings. I know many who are disillusioned or feeling somewhat alienated, but 'arch-conservative, right-wing'? Never." -- Lori Magno, Boston, MA.

Absinthe

"Back in my absinthe-drinking days, in the early '80s in Barcelona, we used to drink it out of bottles almost identical to the one DreamWorks sent out. They were imported from Morocco. Of course, I was never really sure that what I was drinking was absinthe, never having been a true connoiseur of wormwood and all. Anyway, I never hallucinated, never got too fuzzy, and it always tasted treacly to me.

"I much prefered the local vino tinto in the end. But there are bars in London nowadays selling the bona fide real stuff, poured over sugar cubes through little tea strainers like in the Impressionist paintings, and my British mates tell me that even it's to gag for it, to quote Matt Dillon in RUMBLE FISH, "gets you where you wanna go." -- Shawn Levy

"True, absinthe is illegal to sell in the states, but not illegal to possess. Giving it away, I believe, is a bit more murky. Sure, a bottle as a Christmas gift from a dear friend who traveled overseas wouldn't attract any attention. But if the ATF got wind of a major movie studio sending out a mass mailing of the stuff, the green shit would hit the fan. The feds would want to know every detail about where they got it, who did they send it to, etc. All it would take is one reviewer's kid to drink the stuff and take a tumble out of a third story window to make negative headlines for the studio.

"Besides, if you're interested in getting your hands on it, the following website ships to the US. I've used them before and they are very reliable, if not a bit slow (2 to 3 weeks). http://www.absintheoriginal.com/" -- Rich B., Baltimore, MD.