The next night, he accepted the Santa Barbara International Film Festival's Kirk Douglas award at the fest's annual fundraiser and was in L.A. this week for a 30th anniversary "Saturday Night Fever" screening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

There's no question that Travolta is working it.

So is Keri Russell, who is working overtime doing press for her new film, "August Rush," but taking time out to attend a pie and champagne party that Fox Searchlight threw Friday afternoon at Taste on Melrose in honor of her terrific performance in the early 2007 release, "Waitress."

She freely admitted it was a thrill acting with a legend like 81-year-old Andy Griffith, who deserves some awards attention of his own for his charming portrayal of the owner of the pie shop where Russell's character works.

We wondered if she ever saw his overlooked masterful film debut as Lonesome Rhodes, an Arkansas hick who becomes a media sensation drunk with power in 1957's "A Face in the Crowd" directed by Elia Kazan. He should easily have been nominated for the best actor Oscar but the brilliant film sadly flopped and he was forgotten.

Russell is well aware of it and says she has the movie in her Netflix queue and is anxious to see it.

Fifty years later, the academy can now make it up to Griffith, but he's a long shot in a year that is loaded with fine turns by veterans including Hal Holbrook, Max von Sydow and Albert Finney.

Incredibly, the star who had his greatest success in TV seems to be awards-challenged; he was never even nominated for an Emmy for his classic "Andy Griffith Show."

Writer-director-producer Paul Haggis was busy late last week trying to jumpstart an academy campaign for his fall entry, "In the Valley of Elah," which had an extremely well-received screening for WGA, SAG and DGA members at the Landmark Theatre in West L.A. on Thursday.

Just before taking some questions from the crowd, Haggis (who has been out on the picket lines) asked each audience member to identify which union they belonged to by raising their hands.

Haggis then told them that they all needed to keep communicating with each other during this crucial time in Hollywood's labor relations.

Although the DVD screener of "Elah" is on its way out to academy members and critics groups, Haggis is hoping to find a theater where they can four-wall the film and drum up some attention for the box office-challenged picture.

Despite a great performance by Tommy Lee Jones and many passionate fans, "Elah" has all but disappeared from the scene like so many other dramas this season.

As mentioned here last week, we hotly anticipated academy reaction to Saturday afternoon's "official" screening of "No Country for Old Men." About 400 or so turned up (a good crowd) and there was nice applause at the end for the director, writing and acting credits (Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin in particular), if not the picture itself.

One member told us she loved it and thought it was great filmmaking, while another had a mixed reaction and said he is not so sure it will make Oscar's top five.