Screen Writer

Whisper it quietly or Sydney Pollack might hear. It looks as if that lumbering dinosaur, The Classic Oscar Movie, might finally have succumbed to extinction, writes Donald Clarke.

We're thinking here of films such as Out of Amadeus and Dances with the Shakespeare Patient. For decades the Academy has leaned towards respectable period films directed by esteemed middlebrows - hey there, Mr Pollack - that, as often as not, end with an inspirational message.

"I was on the point of gouging my lardy heart out with a broken bottle," Brad Dunderhead of Sludge City, Iowa, told us. "But, after sitting through A Beautiful Mind, I was inspired to lose 500 pounds, get my high school diploma and take orders in the Church of the Seventh Maniac." That sort of thing.

The closest thing to an old- fashioned Oscar Movie in this year's nominations for best picture is Atonement. Like The English Patient, Joe Wright's film is based on an esteemed novel detailing a romantic tragedy of the second World War. It is, as

it happens, a fine piece of work. But the fact that, even before its release, Oscarologists were fingering it as a likely winner does sour one towards it somewhat. The presence of frocks, bombs and cut-glass accents were, it seems, all that mattered to the pundits.

Meanwhile, despite good early word, the Oscar hopes of There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men were being talked down. Yes, both these films were drawn from respectable literary sources (novels by Upton Sinclair and Cormac McCarthy respectively).

But Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coen Brothers aren't exactly mainstream directors, and both films sounded so, well, nasty. Surely a nice film based on a nice book would triumph over these rude interlopers. Hasn't Mike Newell directed a version of Love in the Time of Cholera?

However, the Academy has opened itself up to change recently. Long viewed as a retirement club for golfing codgers, the organisation eventually realised that, to reflect the average movie audience, it would have to draw in some younger members.

"Lord of the Rings winning the top event was, to me, a watershed event," Steven Gaydos, executive editor of Variety magazine, told Screenwriter a few years back. "That indicated the age has been pulled down a bit. I think the Academy has made a real effort to revivify its membership."

Further confirmation came when The Departed won best picture last year. The film may have been directed by a sexagenarian, but, unlike any winner since The Silence of the Lambs, it belonged to a contemporary genre that appeals to viewers who have yet to learn the difference between a nine-iron and a wedge.

This year, No Country and There Will Be Blood, both viscerally thrilling, proudly pessimistic dramas, have emerged as the most nominated films. The Classic Oscar Movie is in retreat and - whisper once more - the two best American films of the last year are the favourites for the most important award. For the first time since 1974 (look it up), the Best Picture might actually be the best picture.