OSCAR WORTHIES

REVIEWED - FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:FOR Your Consideration takes its title from the euphemism traditionally used to emblazon the reams of advertisements placed in the film trade press to promote the prospects of potential Oscar contenders. Ironically enough, some of those ads in recent months have been for For Your Consideration, which gets a timely release here today, a fortnight before this year's Academy Awards ceremony.

The core team behind the picture has been responsible for a succession of mock-umentaries - some quite overrated - lampooning heavy metal bands (in This Is Spinal Tap), small-town theatre (Waiting for Guffman), pedigree dog contests (Best in Show) and folk music (A Mighty Wind).

Opting for a fictional narrative in For Your Consideration - scripted by Christopher Guest (who also directed) and fellow cast member Eugene Levy (see interview, page 10) - they have produced their funniest spoof since the justly celebrated Spinal Tap. With its tongue firmly in its cheek, the movie is shaped as a skit on the film industry as it follows the progress of an unheralded US low-budget indie film when Oscar buzz unexpectedly builds around it.

A lowly-paid cast and crew are working on a tacky sentimental melodrama, Home for Purim, when an internet rumour on www.filmtattle.com suggests that lead actress Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara) - who hasn't had a decent role since she played a blind prostitute decades earlier - could figure in the Oscar nominations for her performance as the movie's ailing materfamilias. Desperate for space-filling material, various US TV shows scramble to pick up on the rumour, and two other cast members (Parker Posey and Harry Shearer) are also touted as likely Oscar nominees.

This merciless satire pokes fun at the vanity and insecurity of actors, the vacuity of US TV entertainment and talk shows and their absurdly coiffured presenters, along with an inept but mercenary agent (Levy), a clueless producer (Jennifer Coolidge) whose money comes from her family's diaper-cleaning business, and a studio head (Ricky Gervais) who is patently insincere.

However, for all its sharpness of wit and the admirably straight-faced performances of its spirited ensemble cast (in which O'Hara is a tragicomic hoot) For Your Consideration failed to secure any Oscar nominations in its own right this year.