Feb 23, 2007  |  By: GREG MARZULLO  | COMMENTS     

Although this year’s Oscar race is not nearly as thrilling for gay audiences as last year’s queer heavy season, the competition is providing for one of the more interesting years in recent memory.

The stock characters are well in place: The long-snubbed yet deserving director (Martin Scorsese) and his arch rival from a previous year (Clint Eastwood); a diva fest unlike many others with three titans in the center ring for Best Actress (Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep and Judi Dench); lauded performances recreating real, live persons (gasp!), which always send voters into a frenzy of mimicry adulation; and young upstarts (Jennifer Hudson) causing a tizzy because of a musical performance.

This year’s awards don’t have anything particularly gay about them, given that the nominee pickings are so slim, but there’s always the lesbian host, Ellen DeGeneres. It’s interesting to note how out celebrities acquit themselves in the minds of the broader public and the subset of the gay audience. Of late, DeGeneres has seemed safe and low-key in the lead-up to Tinseltown’s big night.

DeGeneres’ Proust questionnaire in the current issue of Vanity Fair reads as particularly straight-washed and evasive. Some of her cloying answers are most remarkable for what they don’t say as opposed to what they do.

“What is your idea of perfect happiness? I don’t know how happiness could get any more perfect, but I think it would involve more puppies.

“What or who is the greatest love of your life? PDR.”

What about the partner she keeps touting as the love of her life? It just seems all too shallow, so it will be interesting to see how she pulls off the job on Feb. 25. Will she play it completely safe for the viewers at home (as some feel she does on her TV show), or can we expect to see the old Ellen who boldly came out on the cover of Time magazine?

ARGUABLY THE MOST notably gay-themed film also features two Oscar-nominated performances. “Notes on a Scandal” might be a tough sell for some people who like their villains to be villains, but for anyone interested in depth of character and some crackling performances, this film is first-rate.

While everyone is (rightfully) crowing about Helen Mirren’s performance in “The Queen,” my hopes are pinned on Judi Dench. I am never a fan of mimicry performances, and although Mirren does an outstanding job filling in the private life of an out-of-touch monarch, audiences seem more spellbound by the celebrity of the individual portrayed as opposed to the portrayal itself.

Dench’s performance is alternately spine chilling, bitterly funny and heartbreaking. The closet has worked its cruel magic on Dench’s Barbara Covett (love that Hawthorne-like last name!), twisting her into a pathologically driven woman who, in Dench’s deft hands, guards a hopeful girlish longing that shines through in moments of aching poignancy. (Not to be outdone, the ever-luminous Cate Blanchett also delivers a riveting performance, matching Dench at every turn.)

Gay show tune queens will also be closely watching the Best Supporting Actress category, chanting Jennifer Hudson’s name in the hopes she’ll win for her powerhouse performance as Effie in gay director Bill Condon’s “Dreamgirls.”

Original song is another tight category that has some gay representation. Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need to Wake Up,” featured in the ecological clarion call “An Inconvenient Truth,” has been nominated for Original Song. It faces tough competition with three new songs from “Dreamgirls,” but at least there’s no Three 6 Mafia this year to stand ineptly in the way.