In a late-inning campaign effort for early favorite Blanchett, the Weinstein Co. bought an expensive Variety front cover last week and included a 45-minute reel of her entire performance (which doesn't kick in until about an hour into the movie). It's an interesting strategy that may be too late in the game to make a real difference and get voters to see the great Cate's daring cross-gender work.

Still another category generating its share of tension is best documentary feature, in which Academy voters must prove they have seen all of the contenders in a theater. This requirement is giving marketers and publicists for the entries migraine headaches, as they not only have to make sure their own film is seen, they have to craftily try to get Academy members who may vote for it into all the other movies as well in order to make the vote count.

Michael Moore's $21-million dollar grossing "Sicko" may be the most successful and best-known of the nominees, but the "must-see-all-five" rule has several "consultants" working overtime to get as many potential "Sicko" voters as possible into screenings of the other contenders, "No End In Sight," "Taxi to the Dark Side," "War/Dance" and "Operation Homecoming."

Of course, who's to say these voters won't be swayed by what they see and vote for the competition? It's what arouses suspicions and anxiety among those shilling for the docs, a tough navigation full of landmines for any awards consultant trying to deliver the gold for their client.

Although the Academy doesn't release the numbers, the winner could be decided by a very small percentage of the group, perhaps less than 400 members.

Finally, if you've had your fill of this year's big Oscar hopefuls, it may be time to turn the clock back 40 years and revisit 1967. This week saw two major events heralding the top Oscar nominees of that year, "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" which both led the race with 10 nominations apiece (although they lost in the end to "In the Heat of the Night").

Warren Beatty was on the Warner Bros. lot talking up the March 25 special DVD anniversary edition of his landmark film, "Bonnie and Clyde", a sort of "No Country for Old Men" of its time that did go on to win two Oscars for supporting actress Estelle Parsons and cinematography. On another night on the other side of town, Sony's home entertainment was hosting a special screening of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," which was released this week in a special 40th anniversary edition DVD and as part of the new box set collection of some choice Stanley Kramer films.

For some strange reason, the late prodigious producer/director Kramer was often vilified by certain critics for his socially conscious films that dealt with everything from race relations and greed to the Holocaust and nuclear proliferation. Some critics have called his films out of touch, but a look now at many of them proves they were anything but, perhaps a reason why the Academy nominated six of them for best picture, including "Dinner," which featured Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier in a movie about the consequences of a racially-mixed romance. It won Oscars for Hepburn and original screenplay, and in light of the current Barack Obama frenzy, the movie could not be more relevant, as evidenced by the audience reaction when Poitier, as a magna cum laude too-good-to-be-true doctor, puts cold water on the far-off fantasy of whether a black person could ever become secretary of state or even president.

Obama himself is the product of just the kind of inter-racial marriage this movie portrays, and it's not hard to imagine him now in a slightly altered version of the Poitier role, an almost perfect and brilliant Harvard-educated African American coming to dinner at the White House.

Oh, and did we mention the name of the woman who runs Hepburn's art gallery and strongly questions Poitier's suitability for her daughter? Hillary.

As one audience member said after the screening, "Nostradamus must have written that movie!"

From the Season of '67 to the Season of '07, the more things change, the more they stay the same.