Although President Bush’s reality TV show in Iraq is distracting attention from the Motion Picture Academy’s superficial self-congratulatory celebration, the Oscar nomination process surges on, its choices little reflecting the turmoil in the rest of the world. The nominees include a much-hoopla’d revival of a moribund genre, a melodrama about discontented women haunted by a ghost from the past, a bloated epic sequel, a period gangster extravaganza from Martin Scorsese, and an overwrought tearjerker.

War? What war?

The year was 1991, and the films nominated were Dances with Wolves, Ghost, The Godfather, Part III, GoodFellas, and Awakenings. Twelve years later, the circumstances are slightly different but uncannily the same, so will Hollywood and the Academy respond again with indifference and navel gazing?

If so, the candidates will mirror the timid slate of 1991. This year’s much-hoopla’d revival of a moribund genre is the pseudo-musical Chicago. The Martin Scorsese extravaganza is Gangs of New York. The ghost of self-pity haunts discontented women in the chick flick The Hours, and battle scenes and production values triumph again in the bloated epic sequel The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. As for Todd Haynes’s Douglas Sirk pastiche, the overwrought, tearjerking Far from Heaven, can the Academy get away with nominating two women’s films for Best Picture?

Let’s start with perhaps the most suffocatingly self-enclosed of the bunch, Chicago. Everybody longs for the return of the musical, the genre that delighted America in the depths of the Depression and on the eve of World War II, but until a real musical comes around, this exercise in celebrity starpower and MTV editing will have to do. What’s the big appeal, besides nostalgia? Perhaps the reassurance that " razzle dazzle " — form over substance, glitz over grit — will always prevail. So expect Chicago to toddle to a Best Picture nomination (and a likely Oscar victory), as as well as a Best Actress nod for the adorable Renée Zellweger and a Best Actor nomination for Mr. " Razzle Dazzle " himself, Richard Gere. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Queen Latifah — the latter the best thing in the picture — will compete against each other in the Best Supporting Actress category.

Queen Latifah apart, this will be one of the palest Oscar contests in some time, with no Halle Berry or Denzel Washington in sight. Affirmative action, it seems, has gone the way of Trent Lott. That’s bad news for African-Americans like Dennis Haysbert, who provides some of the few genuine moments in Far from Heaven (Dennis Quaid’s whiny performance in that picture will get the Best Supporting Actor nomination instead), and Derek Luke, who’s revelatory in the otherwise uneven Antwone Fisher.

Women, on the other hand, have nothing to complain about this year, other than an embarrassment of riches unseen since the studio era. Maybe this trend represents a quiet revolt against the increasingly anti-feminist policies and attitudes of the times, the growing reactionary misogyny that has reached a peak with the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Whatever the Supreme Court may decide, however, the Academy will be pondering performances that celebrate a woman’s right to choose.

Such as Zellweger’s murderous housewife in Chicago, who chooses to shoot an abusive lover (don’t discount the film’s anti-capital-punishment subtext either) and dares to get off the hook. Or Salma Hayek’s Frida, who chooses to be not only the long-suffering wife of an artist — Diego Rivera, and Alfred Molina should get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for portraying him — but a long-suffering artist as well. Or Diane Lane, who chooses to be you-know-what in Unfaithful and clearly enjoys it, or Julianne Moore, who has no choice but to be an unlikely crusader for ’50s social justice in Far from Heaven.

That’s just for starters. To fit in all the contenders, some studios have played fast and loose with the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories.

Such is the case with The Hours, whose simpering self-involvement and pseudo-literary allure will guarantee it both a Best Picture nomination in this year of introversion and a Best Director spot for Stephen Daldry. But what about the cast, in which three actresses share almost equal screen time as the protagonists in separate episodes? Ed Harris has no one from his own film to compete with and so should get a Best Supporting Actor nomination. For the rest, though, DreamWorks has had to do some fancy maneuvering, pushing Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep for Best Actress and Julianne Moore for a Supporting nomination. In the end, Moore will get the nod for Far from Heaven, and Streep will have to settle for a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Adaptation because Kidman will edge her out for Best Actress . . . by a nose.

Speaking of prosthetics, special effects, and phony emotions: the year did see its fair share of guy movies, but none that required much in the way of performances from human beings. What male performance could be nominated from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers — Gollum as Best Supporting Object? Nonetheless, the film, like its predecessor, will earn a Best Picture slot. Although it seems the farthest removed from reality, it will be the nominee that best reflects the state of the real world: are Saruman and Sauron images of Saddam and bin Laden or Bush and Blair? Peter Jackson, who resisted urgings to remove The Two Towers from the title, will receive his second nomination as Best Director, again to no avail. Perhaps LOTR #3 will be the charm.

It should be for Martin Scorsese, who will be getting his third Best Director nomination for Gangs of New York, a close runner-up to Rings for least realistic movie of the year and a shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination. Daniel Day Lewis matches Nicole Kidman’s nose and hand-wringing histrionics with his handle-bar moustache and vaudeville bravura: he will, no doubt, be nominated for Best Actor.

His hammy exuberance will be an exception among the nominees, however. This will be the year of the quiet American. Not the fine adaptation of the Graham Greene novel starring Michael Caine in his best performance in years, however. Miramax has written that film off because its perceived criticism of US foreign policy (50 years ago, that is) will be seen as unpatriotic. No, I mean quiet Americans like Jack Nicholson’s tormented retiree in About Schmidt. Or Nicolas Cage’s dithering twin screenwriters (okay, they’re not quiet, but they are passive) in Adaptation. Or Christopher Walken’s quietly desperate failure in Catch Me If You Can, the high point of Spielberg’s belabored comedy and a sure Best Supporting Actor nominee. And then there is a very quiet Pole, played by Adrien Brody in The Pianist.

Roman Polanski has been a quiet Pole, too, hardly making a sound in the cinema world since Chinatown (1974) and his enforced exile from America following his statutory rape conviction in 1977. But The Pianist might be his greatest film, the consummation of his career, and, as a Holocaust survivor, his life. He probably won’t make it to the ceremonies to join the Daldry, Jackson, and Scorsese.

And the fifth Best Director nominee? Will it be Rob Marshall, the rookie who put Chicago through its razzle-dazzle paces? Probably not — though both the Directors Guild and the Golden Globes gave him a nod, I think the Directors branch of the Academy might find him a little wet behind the ears. Alexander Payne for About Schmidt? He might be seen as too condescending and misanthropic in his satire, so Schmidt will have to be content with Nicholson’s nomination, Kathy Bates as Best Supporting Actress, and perhaps a screenwriting acknowledgment. Spike Jonze for Adaptation? True, this is the year of self-absorption, but give me a break. Maybe Chris Cooper will join Streep and get a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

No, most likely Todd Haynes will get the nomination for Far From Heaven; it’s probably the most directed of all the films released last year, if not the best. Will it get the Best Picture nomination as well? I think that the Academy voters might decide that four artificial pastiches should be enough for one year, even a year in which they’re trying hard to pretend that movies are above reality and are untouched by the sordid politics and tragic events of the world.

For that reason I think The Pianist might have a chance. True, some might dismiss it as another Holocaust movie, a rerun of Schindler’s List, which was dutifully rewarded a few years back. In a way, though, with its true story of the pianist who witnesses the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto and lives to play again, The Pianist is the ultimate tribute to movies, and art in general, as an escape from the nightmare of history. And who knows how much of an escape we’ll need by the time the Oscars are handed out, on March 23.