Wild cards in Oscar's deck

There's no membership card, but there is a statue. There's no clubhouse, but there is an annual meeting at the Kodak Theatre.

Welcome to the Oscar Club.

It's no secret that Oscar voters seem to favor certain performers over others, nominating people such as Judi Dench, Kate Winslet and Jack Nicholson time and again.

But all that may be changing given the broadband speed with which Oscar odds now rise and fall. Campaigns that might once have seemed worth little more than a scoff now stand a legitimate chance. Emilio Estevez as best director? Sacha Baron Cohen for best original screenplay? "Dreamgirls" supporting star Jennifer Hudson a front runner based largely on a brief clip reel screened in May? Someone like Jessica Biel may sound like a fanciful long shot, but there's still a lot of ground to cover between now and nomination day in January. As once-supposed locks fall by the wayside and unlikely contenders emerge, the most dangerous campaign tool this year may be a simple question: Why not?
 
   
 
 
 
 
The outside man
Ryan Gosling's performance in "Half Nelson" is arguably the year's best reviewed. Yet Gosling isn't at the top of many Oscar lists. He could probably be a bigger star — a leading-man, Hollywood-actor type. Rather, with performances such as his startlingly alive turn in "Half Nelson" as a drugged-out high school teacher taking tentative first steps toward changing his life, the actor is charting a path entirely his own.

"There is this idea in Hollywood," Gosling says, "and I've seen it work for people, where the unspoken rule is 'Do two for them and one for yourself.' And that's kind of considered a fact. I've never really found that to be true for me. I've gotten more opportunities out of working on things I believed in than I ever did on things that weren't special to me."

Gosling is unabashedly direct as to why he has become so specific about the roles he'll take on.

"Listen, I've done a lot. I've been working since I was 12. I worked a long time without any freedom, where I was just selling ad space on TV and saying the lines I was supposed to say and trying to please people. And it took me a long time to get to a place were I felt I could work for myself and work for the experience."