Scott's World -- UPI Arts & Entertainment

HOLLYWOOD, March 11 (UPI) -- With a couple of weeks to go before the 74th annual Academy Awards, other movie honors parceled out this week have helped provide a profile of the four major favorites to win the Oscars later this month.

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.

Newcomer Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring") is a New Zealander, largely unknown in the DGA. Ridley Scott ("Black Hawk Down") is a Brit and previous winner whose film was not a big favorite. David Lynch ("Mulholland Dr.") is brilliant but unorthodox and a maverick, more or less an outsider.

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.