BEIJING, Feb. 25 -- Hollywood held its breath as the race for the Oscars entered its final stage. Unlike last year¡¯s utterly predictable ceremony, when clear front-runners took all the acting awards and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King left precious few trophies for anyone else, this year¡¯s Oscar night is loaded with uncertainty.

    The prevailing sense in Hollywood is that Clint Eastwood¡¯s boxing saga Million Dollar Baby will triumph because it carries an emotional wallop lacking in Martin Scorsese¡¯s Howard Hughes epic The Aviator.

    It is not often the Oscars see two giants of American cinema duke it for both the best director and best picture awards.

    Eastwood has won a best picture and best director¡¯s Oscar before ¡ª in 1993 for Unforgiven ¡ª and many say his Mystic River should have won last year¡¯s best picture award over the third and final The Lord of the Rings drama.

    Yet The Aviator is not down for the count. It has grand filmmaking buoyed by spectacular visuals, excellent performances and an engaging glimpse of old Hollywood in all its garish glory.

    Million Dollar Baby has the momentum, though. While Aviator is made on a grand scale, including a harrowing air crash, Million Dollar Baby is its near polar opposite ¡ª small in scale and as dramatic, touching and troublesome a story as moviegoers could find.

    Baby has two secret weapons, the experts said. One is the popularity of the 74-year-old Eastwood among his fellow actors, who make up the largest block of Oscars voters ¡ª 1,277 out of 5,808 ¡ª while the other is the film¡¯s late general release, which has left it fresh in the minds of voters.

    As with best picture, the directing category is a two-contestant race. Eastwood won the Golden Globe and the Directors Guild of America honor, the latter being a solid forecast of who will go on to win the Oscar.

    Only six times in the previous 56 years has the guild winner failed to take the directing Oscar, though three of those times have come in the last nine years, and the guild is only two-for-four in predicting the academy winner over the last four years.

    Career sentiment could creep into some voters¡¯ thinking. Eastwood, also nominated a year ago for Mystic River, won the directing Oscar for Unforgiven, while Scorsese has one of the most notable records of futility at the Oscars for a filmmaker of his stature.

    Nominated four times previously (Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas and Gangs of New York), Scorsese has lost every time. He was considered a sentimental favorite two years ago for Gangs, but that movie was shut out in all 10 of its Oscar categories.

    But this year the 62-year-old Scorsese was supposed to have his best shot in decades because he created a film of the sort that traditionally wins Oscars.

    The Aviator is an epic like such previous winners as Gladiator and Titanic. It¡¯s about Hollywood¡¯s glamour days of the 1930s and 1940s.

    Jamie Foxx is seen as the clear front-runner for his stunning performance as the blind singer and pianist Ray Charles. If Foxx were not on the scene, any one of these actors could walk away with the Oscar.

    But Oscar newcomer Foxx, a double nominee as a supporting-actor pick for Collateral, is so good that even Ray Charles¡¯ son and longtime pal Quincy Joneshave said they felt like it was the singer himself on screen instead.

    Foxx has dominated lead-actor honors at earlier Hollywood ceremonies, his prizes including a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award.

    Hilary Swank is favorite to win best actress.

    But she has a tough battle on her hands against Annette Bening, nominated for her role in Being Julia, who lost out on the same award five years ago when Swank won for Boys Don¡¯t Cry.

    This time, Swank is the front-runner again, having won the Screen Actors Guild honor and the Golden Globe for dramatic actress with a performance that cuts even deeper than her breakout role in Boys Don¡¯t Cry.

    Bening, also a previous Oscar nominee as supporting actress for The Grifters, took the Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy for Being Julia, playing an aging stage diva coping with duplicitous men and a young rival.

    (Source: Shenzhen Daily-Agencies)