The four principal categories: best picture, best director, best actor and best actress.

Perhaps the key to this year's Oscar puzzle is the individual who wins the best director award in the annual vote taken by the Directors Guild of America.

This week the DGA voted to give the esteemed distinction to Ron Howard, thus providing a pivotal figure around which the other awards could well fall into place.

Howard directed "A Beautiful Mind."

Moreover, Russell Crowe, star of "A Beautiful Mind," without whom the film would not have created such a stir both here and abroad, was on hand to give his director the award.

Crowe's performance is one of the best movie achievements by an actor in recent memory.

Together with Howard's deft touch behind the camera, it appears "A Beautiful Mind" will win two of the four major awards come March 24 at the Oscar presentations.

Crowe's chances improved considerably when, also this week, the Screen Actors Guild voted him best actor of the year for his stunning performance.

The other four best actor Oscar nominees -- Sean Penn ("I Am Sam"), Will Smith ("Ali"), Denzel Washington ("Training Day") and Tom Wilkinson ("In the Bedroom") are given little chance to beat Crowe for the prize.

The SAG award for best actress in a feature film went to Halle Berry for her performance in "Monster's Ball," which was a bit of an upset.

Sissy Spacek ("In the Bedroom") was the favorite in polls around Hollywood, and glamorous Nicole Kidman ("Moulin Rouge") was considered a good bet to win the SAG award, too.

Judi Dench ("Iris") and Renee Zellweger ("Bridget Jones's Diary") are more or less out of the running.

Too, Berry is a popular young black beauty and the politically liberal SAG had an opportunity to give a racial minority a boost.

It is possible, but not necessarily probable, that the big winners in the 2001 Oscar race will be:

Best picture: "A Beautiful Mind"

Best director: Ron Howard

Best actor: Russell Crowe

Best actress: Halle Berry

If there are upsets in the best performance contests, look for Denzel Washington to win best actor and Nicole Kidman to edge Berry.

Long shots for best director and picture are Peter Jackson and "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring."

There is little chance there will be upsets in either best picture or best actor. Both film and star are unqualified sure things.

It should be noted that since the inception of the DGA awards in 1949 only five winners of the DGA award have failed to go on and win the Oscar, which makes Howard an obvious Academy Award choice.

Furthermore, winners of the best director Oscar most often win the Oscar for best picture.

The academy library reports that in the past 73 years only 19 times has a director won the Oscar when the best picture award went to another film.

Such was the case last year when "Gladiator" won the best picture award while Steven Soderberg won the best director trophy for "Traffic."

All the same, many factors will determine the winners, some are so quirky it is difficult to ascertain how the 6,500 academy members will cast their ballots.

Again, focusing on the best director category, Howard has the inside track. Not just became "A Beautiful Mind" is a superb movie, but because of Howard's personal popularity.

He is, after all, among Hollywood's most successful directors. He has been nominated for best director three times in the past.

At 7 years old he played the impish Winthrop in "The Music Man" and was everybody's favorite kid, Opie, in TV's "Andy Griffith Show" and teenager Ritchie Cunningham in "Happy Days" along with other roles in scores of movies.

The other directorial nominees this year are not as personally popular.

Robert Altman ("Gosford Park") has been a fractious individualist who often gives Hollywood the back of his hand.

The competition leaves Howard the likeliest winner of the Oscar. But many in Hollywood, including not a few academy members, are convinced Altman should win because "Gosford Park" was a directorial landmark.

Generally, box-office receipts are not a major consideration for nominating a movie for best picture. This year's five nominees, however, were all hugely successful at the turnstiles.

Happily, all nominees deserve the accolades.

Magic of Hobbits still attracts fans
Aleksandrs Rozens
Reuters, UK

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In 1969, a lieutenant with the U.S. Army in Vietnam ran beneath the wash of a helicopter's rotor blades and clambered into the helicopter, where the first thing he saw was a picture of a Hobbit on the back of the pilot's helmet.

"It struck me -- the universality of the book. Wherever you go and whatever the situations, the book is so popular that somebody has read it and liked it enough to adopt the Hobbit as a logo and talisman," recalled Robert Burgmann, the 59-year-old Vietnam veteran, from his home in Sandwich, Massachusetts.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" became popular during the Vietnam era because, to some readers, it portrayed the triumph of good over evil. For many, the trilogy was a refuge from the chaotic events of the time.

Three decades later, Burgmann revisited the squat, sweet-tempered and hairy-footed creatures from the books, prompted by the first of three films based on Tolkien's epic.

His interest is shared by another generation of readers drawn by the movie about Tolkien's mythical world as the United States fights its war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

With 13 Oscar nominations and nearly $300 million (210 million pounds) in sales after its first two months in U.S. cinemas, "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" has cast a spell on millions of viewers.

That magic, in turn, has stoked sales of Tolkien books, including "The Lord of The Rings," its predecessor, "The Hobbit," as well as titles related to the movie which opened in December.

Published in 1938, "The Hobbit," the first of Tolkien's books, introduces audiences to Hobbit Bilbo Baggins and a magical world of dragons and wizards. Between 1954 and 1955, Tolkien wrote "The Lord of the Rings," which for reasons of cost his publisher split in three parts: "The Fellowship of The Ring," "The Two Towers," and "The Return of The King."

ONCE A BEST-SELLER...

The Tolkien trilogy first hit the best-seller lists when it was first published in paperback in the 1960s and became a favourite on college campuses. The trilogy tracks Hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest to save the world by destroying a magical ring with evil powers.

Tolkien, a philologist, studied Finnish and Germanic folklore and elements of these are scattered throughout his work.

Tom Shippey, who wrote "JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century," believes readers are attracted to the Tolkien stories because they portray a battle between good and evil. This mythical pull may have become particularly strong after the September 11 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Centre and damaged the Pentagon.

"It remained relevant and important to people because it is a response to the great problems of the 20th century, which have been warfare, politics, survival and the origins of evil," said Shippey. "Lots of people took it as a Vietnam commentary and it still has relevance now."

The sales figures would support that. "Sales have been building in the last three years," said Clay Harper, Tolkien special projects director of Houghton Mifflin, publisher of Tolkien's work in the United States.

According to Harper, a single volume paperback incorporating the trilogy with artwork from the film on its cover sold 1.1 million copies last year. Year-to-date sales of that edition totalled 640,000 copies.

Houghton has several versions of Tolkien's trilogy. There are also various related books like guides to the film characters and an official movie guide.

"The history from a sales standpoint is not peaks and valleys. It is like steps steadily climbing on," said Harper. "For an almost 50-year-old best seller to ride to the top of the best seller lists is a bit of a phenomenon."

For some younger readers, Tolkien's world of Middle-earth is not their first taste of magic, thanks to the popularity of bespectacled wizard, Harry Potter. "A lot of librarians and book sellers recommend The Hobbit and Tolkien's work as the next step," Harper said.

But, whether J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series will enjoy the resilient appetite among readers in 50 years remains to be seen. Houghton Mifflin still receives mail addressed to Tolkien, who died in 1973. Letter writers quiz the author about details in his books such as how he created certain character names.

But the pace may wane. After all, there are two more films of the trilogy due, one next December and the final one December 2003.

"I'm a little worried the public will be burned out. If you walk into Borders or Barnes and Noble, it would be hard to miss the large presence of Tolkien's novels," he said. "It is tough to keep that going for three years without people getting tired."