If David Letterman were hosting the Academy Award ceremony this year — and he is only slightly more likely than Ken Lay to get that gig — he wouldn't have to do his notorious "Oprah ... Uma" routine, where at the 1995 ceremony he introduced two celebrities who had nothing in common but eccentric names. Instead, he could say, "Opie ... Oscar."

This looks like the year Ron Howard gets a little respect. The former child star has directed movies ("Apollo 13") that have been nominated for Best Picture, but he personally has not received any mention from the Academy. Now, with his "A Beautiful Mind" the clear front runner, and with his first Oscar nomination, he finally looks ready to graduate in the eyes of the Academy membership from the kid from Mayberry to the man of the hour.

"A Beautiful Mind," the cleverly romanticized biography of mathematician John Nash, earned eight nominations, the same number as Baz Luhrmann's swoony, moony "Moulin Rouge." That's five less than Peter Jackson's keenly-told Tolkien epic "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" gleaned, and in 16 of the past 17 years the film with the most nominations has won Best Picture. But if "A Beautiful Mind" doesn't walk home happy on March 24, most people will be surprised, and Howard can go back to being the directorial Rodney Dangerfield.

Of course, in Hollywood, as screenwriter William Goldman so cogently put it, nobody knows anything. That certainly applies to any Academy crystal-ballery. The Oscar nominations are not a game that can be won by marshalling stats — like, say, rotisserie baseball. It is a game involving quirky prejudices, obscenely large marketing campaigns and an appeal to the lowest median denominator — like, say, politics. So you will hear no critical whining here; we have 364 other days for that. Just a few cogent morning-of observations from the Olympus of our wisdom.

1. In most years, four of the top five films have their directors nominated. This year, there was twice the usual amount of divergence. Two films nominated for the top prize, "In the Bedroom" and "Moulin Rouge," did not get nods for their directors, Todd Field and Baz Luhrmann; and two directors, David Lynch and Ridley Scott, did not see their films, "Mulholland Dr." and "Black Hawk Down," make the final five for Best Picture. In one sense, the Academy made judicious choices. "Mulholland Dr." was too goofy, and "Black Hawk Down" too bloody, for the Academy membership (average age: 112), but at least they were recognized as imaginative, daring directorial achievements. As for Luhrmann, well, that omission is just peculiar. "Moulin Rouge" may not be the year's best-directed film, but it is surely the most-directed one.

2. Bizarre, too: "Moulin Rouge," the year's one prominent musical, snagged a nomination for Best Sound but not for Best Score or Best Song (and there were only four, not the usual five, cited in that category).

3. In the new Animated Feature category, two of the three slots were easy to predict: "Shrek" and "Monsters, Inc.," each of which earned critics' huzzahs and more than $250 million at the domestic box office. Some thought that the Academy might cede the third listing to Richard Linklater's "Waking Life," which won the New York Film Critics Circle prize. But apparently the only people who could sit through that philosophy-major peyote dream were the reviewers who voted for it. The Academy went a safer route, giving a nomination to "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius," the third highest-grossing cartoon of the year (about $80 million).

"Shrek" is a slight favorite to win the first longform cartoon Oscar, but the folks at DreamWorks can't be thrilled. When the film was in just a few theaters last month (it was released in May), DreamWorks spent a wad on monster-size newspaper ads, with the clear aim of winning a best-picture nomination. That didn't happen. It was eased off the list of finalists by "In the Bedroom" and "Gosford Park," two "small" films released late in the year. In fact, "Moulin Rouge" was the only Best Picture nominee released before November. What's the opposite of short-term memory loss?

4. The usual ignorance attended the selections for Best Foreign-Language Film. Except for "Amelie" and "No Man's Land," the foreign pictures that earned most critics' plaudits were absent. In their place we got an Argentine melodrama ("Son of the Bride"), a Norwegian film about an insane couple ("Elling") and a 4hr. Indian film about cricket ("Lagaan"). If any of these turns out to be faaaabulous, I promise to apologize in this space.

5. "Gosford Park" took seven nominations (though not for the one it deserved: best score, with all those lovely Ivor Novello tunes). But this was the big party for Robert Altman's haughty house party. Bet it doesn't win a single Oscar.

6. After all the noise about Australians commandeering the Golden Globes, it was the Brits who held onto their familiar pre-eminence in the acting categories. Aussies Russell Crowe ("A Beautiful Mind") and Nicole Kidman ("Moulin Rouge") picked up their expected scrolls; but Her Majesty's subjects corraled six of the ten slots for supporting actor (Jim Broadbent, Ben Kingsley, Ian McKellen) and actress (Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Kate Winslet), and another two in the lead categories (Tom Wilkinson for "In the Bedroom" and Judi Dench for still being Judi Dench). Texas actress Renee Zellweger may have acquired some gilt by association with her persuasive comic turn as an English spinster in "Bridget Jones's Diary." In some places, impersonating a Brit could get you arrested; in Hollywood, it gets you an aisle seat on Oscar night.

Indeed, three of the five Best Picture films — "Gosford Park," The Lord of the Rings" and "Moulin Rouge" — speak with variations on an English accent, and the other two star an English or Australian man speaking American. (They're good at that, because they've watched our movies all their lives. Imitation is the sincerest form of acting.)

Which only proves how little relevance Oscar has to the boys-goofing-around movies that audience flock to see or to the weirder-than-thou films that critics say they love. These are middle-aged movies, most of them, and love stories, most of them, chosen by people who want to see more of the same. That's why Oscar choices typically fall somewhere between blockbusters and classics.

Now we get six weeks of campaigning, Hollywood style. Hit-and-run perp Halle Berry, a Best Actress nominee for "Monster's Ball," kicked off her campaign by crying for Brian Gumbel on CBS, minutes after the nominations were announced. Over on ABC, bad boy Crowe was declaring his love for babies (well, for smelling them) in a taped segment with Diane Sawyer. And on NBC, there was Ron Howard, chatting up Matt Lauer. Opie is determined not to go back to Mayberry.

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