The games Oscar plays

MARQUEE

It's awards season and though it might seem early yet to be talking about the Oscars, by the time this column next comes around those little gold statuettes will already have been handed out "" so here goes.

Judging by critics' forecasts and the results of the award shows (like the Golden Globes) that are used as barometers for the Big One, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain is the clear favourite for the best picture award this year.

This is a film that appears at first glance to be a by-the-numbers love story: a tale of a brief encounter between two people who then move apart and start separate families but find they can't stay away from each other.

What's special about the story though is that the lovers are both men, and this is a year in popular culture when homosexuality, having left the closet years ago, has skipped merrily down the bridal path. The Elton John wedding was one of the most celebrated events of the year, and Hollywood is looking to atone for its past conservatism in dealing with the subject.

Which means Lee's film "" movingly written and acted but hardly exceptional in what has been a good year for movies "" is the favourite. And thus an old Oscar habit "" that of honouring films or performances for intent over execution, or because they fall in line with the trend of the moment "" raises its head again. Here are some other examples from recent years:

Tom Hanks, best actor, Philadelphia: Back in 1993 the Academy wasn't yet bold enough to award best picture to a film with a gay protagonist, so they decided to compensate by sewing up the best actor prize for Hanks' turn as an AIDS victim fighting for justice.

Among those who missed out as a result were David Thewliss in Naked and Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day, both superb. Hanks' performance in the film was noble and saccharine enough, but even more embarrassing was his blubbering on the podium after winning the award.

Nicole Kidman, best actress, The Hours: Oscar loves it when good-looking people use makeup to appear plain for a role, as Kidman did for her part as Virginia Woolf in this ponderous movie. It made her the shoo-in for the best actress trophy that year "" she won by more than just a (false) nose.

Kidman's high-profile divorce from Tom Cruise helped her cause too. The Academy is big on sympathy, as it had shown decades earlier when Hollywood's golden girl Elizabeth Taylor won best actress for Butterfield 8.

That was widely regarded a sentimental gesture, for Taylor had recently been at death's door following a bout of pneumonia. It's still considered one of the weakest performances to win a major Oscar "" but as Shirley MacLaine, a critics' favourite that year, put it, "I lost to a tracheotomy."

A Beautiful Mind: No one ever doubted that this ho-hum biopic was going to win the best picture prize in 2002. It had an irresistible mix of ingredients: the life of a brilliant but schizophrenic mathematician who triumphed against the odds to win the Nobel Prize. That it was also pat and maudlin was purely secondary in the grand scheme of things.

There are of course many more examples, but too little space here. And as a postscript, another advantage of writing this so early is that if Brokeback Mountain doesn't win after all, no one will remember this column!