For the first time in decades, the Hollywood Hills are alive with the sound of music. Top touters are predicting that Oscar will reward "Chicago" with this year's Best Picture statuette — that first place will go to a snazzy musical set in the Second City. (Actually, in terms of population, the Third: the toddlin' town could use a little affirmative action.)

In nominations announced today by the Motion Picture Academy, "Chicago" garnered 13 nominations, most of any film. Among the other films nominated for Best Picture, Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" earned 10 citations, "The Hours" got nine, "The Pianist" seven and "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" six.

In all but two of the past 18 years, the film with the most nominations won Best Picture. One of those years was 2002, when "A Beautiful Mind" took the top award, though "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" had received more nominations.

Today was a happy one for Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Their Miramax Films totaled 39 nominations, including three of the five Best Picture nominees ("The Hours" is a Miramax co-production with Paramount). The list also validated the current studio practice of back-loading its prestige product as a hedge against long-term memory loss: this was the first time since 1989 that all five films had been released in December. The question now is how these films, released about six weeks ago, will play on Oscar night six weeks from now: Sunday, March 23, to be exact.

Let's see what gives in the major categories, and tell you our preferences and predictions in each.

BEST ACTOR

Adrien Brody, "The Pianist"
Nicolas Cage, "Adaptation"
Michael Caine, "The Quiet American"
Daniel Day-Lewis, "Gangs of New York"
Jack Nicholson, "About Schmidt"

DDL might win in another year — for the ferocity of his early De Niro-style performance as Bill the Butcher, and for deigning to make a movie after five years of being what Charlie Rose referred to as "a cobbler." Brody is a one-man show, and there's a boldness to the passivity he exudes as a Jew hiding from the Nazis in war-torn Warsaw. Cage pulled off a decent stunt as the Kaufman brothers in "Adaptation"; he just couldn't keep his mouth from hanging open — the twins looked like identical members of an Iditarod sled team. Caine, at 70, is on the roll of his career, but he won Supporting Actor two years ago.

Nicholson got a lot of praise for not playing himself in the comedy about a widower in a Winnebago, though some of us figured that all those plaudits meant that Jack hadn't exactly disappeared into the role. (Caine achieved just that in "The Quiet American.") But he'll win. He has sexagenarian star quality and always seems to enjoy himself at award shows, purring like a fat cat at a fish market. He's one of the few who realizes that these gigs are supposed to be parties.

HOPE: Caine
THINK: Nicholson

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Chris Cooper, "Adaptation"
Ed Harris, "The Hours"
Paul Newman, "Road to Perdition"
John C. Reilly, "Chicago"
Christopher Walken, "Catch Me If You Can"

A category full of killers, losers and charlatans, sometimes all three in one role. The showiest are Harris' body-punishing turn as a dying writer and Cooper's impersonation of a toothless tiger who loves orchids too much. Reilly, as Mr. Cellophane in "Chicago," pulled off the year's most eye-catching disappearing act. Newman and Walken snagged DreamWorks' only two prominent nominations. Five worthies — yet there doesn't seem much at stake here. Our hopes and guesses are wan. Nonetheless...

HOPE: Walken
THINK: Cooper

BEST ACTRESS

Salma Hayek, "Frida"
Nicole Kidman, "The Hours"
Diane Lane, "Unfaithful"
Julianne Moore, "Far from Heaven"
Renée Zellweger, "Chicago"

It's the year of the woman, at least in the Oscar genre. This category was so vigorously contested that it had no room for Miss Meryl Streep, who gave her best performance of the year in "The Hours." The Hayek nomination is a reward for her seven-year doggedness in pursuit of Frida Kahlo. Sexy Lane and fretful Moore would win in a tamer year than this one, which looks to be a face-off between Kidman's nicely articulated despair and Zellweger's self-mutilating ambition.

Hollywood loves the emergence of an actress from a glamour-girl, and Kidman may get points for which what she could do, dammit, once she got that Cruise guy out her life. Oscar applauds actors who put putty on their noses for the sake of art (it's the Paul Muni syndrome); Kidman put a whole nose on her nose. But Zellweger made her entire personality ugly and prominent. In a close race, we say...

HOPE: Lane
THINK: Kidman

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Kathy Bates, "About Schmidt"
Julianne Moore, "The Hours"
Queen Latifah, "Chicago"
Meryl Streep, "Adaptation"
Catherine Zeta-Jones, "Chicago"

Three of these are, arguably, lead performances; Moore, Streep and Zeta-Jones are all billed above the title. Though Latifah radiated as much movie charisma in her small role as we saw last year, and while we'd love to see an Oscar Night clip of the naked Bates in a hot tub, they won't crowd the three leading ladies in the supporting category.

Streep might get some sympathy for losing out on a Best Actress nomination for "The Hours"; voters can use this entry to reward her in either film, or both. "Chicago" moved Zeta-Jones out of the mannequin class and into the Actors Studio. Moore, by our lights, is stronger in "The Hours" — subtler, less judgmental of her character — than in "Far from Heaven." But there are no losers here. For once, it really is a honor to be nominated.

HOPE: Moore
THINK: Streep

BEST SCREENPLAY ADAPTATION

Bill Condon, "Chicago"
David Hare, "The Hours"
Ronald Harwood, "The Pianist"
Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz, "About a Boy"
Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman, "Adaptation"

This wouldn't be the first time that a Screenplay Oscar went to someone who didn't write the movie he was nominated for. (Check IMDb for awards on "The Brave One" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai.") This year does set a precedent, though: a fictional character has never before been nominated. Charlie Kaufman had the pleasure of hearing his imaginary brother Donald's name mentioned this morning as co-writer of "Adaptation." The Academy says that, in the event "Adaptation" wins the Adaptation award, only one statuette will be given. Will Kaufman get even one for his outlandishly egocentric deconstruction of Susan Orlean's "The Orchid Thief"?

Screenplay adaptations go to writers who have done exalted drudge work: locating the drama in sprawling material (as Hare did); keeping the good lines from a sparkling comic novel (as the "About a Boy" trio did with Nick Hornby's novel); instilling spine and suspense in a one-man Holocaust-survival story (Harwood); and solving a famously intractable property (Bill Condon, "Chicago" — it helped that directed Rob Marshall kept saying all the razzle-dazzle elements of the movie were in the script). It's an honorable group, with no immediate front-runner. So the film that wins in this category may well be the film that wins Best Picture.

HOPE: five-way tie
THINK (after several coin flips): Condon

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Pedro Almodóvar, "Talk to Her"
Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos Cuarón, "Y Tu Mamà También"
Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, Kenneth Lonergan, "Gangs of New York"
Todd Haynes, "Far from Heaven"
Nia Vardalos, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"

Here's the most international bunch of screenwriters since the mid-50s and the first flush of foreign-film eclat, when Federico Fellini, Cesare Zavattini and Jean-Paul Sartre were nominated, and a French short with no dialogue ("The Red Balloon" won Best Screenplay of 1956). This year's nominees include a Spaniard, two Mexican brothers, a Greco-Canadian, an indie auteur and a former TIME movie critic! That's Jay Cocks, who nurtured "Gangs of New York" for decades, midwifing his pal Marty's obsession.

I wish them all well. But Vardalos pulled off a genuine "Rocky" here: like Sylvester Stallone, she wrote a script and insisted she play the lead. Hollywood likes that kind of long-shot moxie, and the $240 million "MBFGW" grossed on a $5 million budget.

HOPE: Cocks & Co.
THINK: Vardalos

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

"Ice Age"
"Lilo & Stitch"
"Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron"
"Spirited Away"
"Treasure Planet"

The hard job this year was to make an animated film and not be nominated. This year two films achieved that distinction: "Stuart Little 2," which was (a) a mix of live action and animation, and (b) an expensive flop; and "The Wild Thornberries," another Nickelodeon feature cartoons that got no respect. Didn't deserve much either.

Hayao Miyazaki is the one master represented here, and "Spirited Away" the one animated feature that sailed with the magic the form is capable of. The favorites would be the CGI "Ice Age" and the more traditional "Lilo," but in a year when neither Pixar nor the DreamWorks computer team released a feature, Miyazaki's tale of a ghostly bath house has a chance. Well, I can dream (in Japanese), can't I?

HOPE: "Spirited Away"
THINK: "Ice Age"

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

"Bowling for Columbine"
"Daughter from Danang"
"Prisoner of Paradise"
"Spellbound"
"Winged Migration"

Stop the presses: no Holocaust movie in this category this year! (But there are Jews-in-WWII films in eight others, so it's not as if Oscar has forgotten its favorite genre.) We usually tell you to vote by subject for Best Documentary. Here are four of this year's topics for discussion:

"Daughter from Danang": an Amer-Asian woman is reunited with her Vietnamese mother after 22 years.

"Prisoner of Paradise": the story of Italian WWII soldiers brought to the U.S. as Prisoners of War.

"Spellbound": kids in the national Spelling Bee.

"Winged Migration": birds in flight (from the "Microcosmos" people).

Then there's "Bowling for Columbine." Michael Moore's essay on American gun love won nine best-documentary prizes from outlying critics' societies, and oodles of awards at international film festivals. But just as the New York Film Festival blackballed "Columbine" from its 2002 fete, the main critics' groups — New York, Los Angeles and the National — went out of their way to award engaging but pedestrian documentaries like "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" and "The Cockettes," neither of which received even a nomination here. These were basically ABC votes: Anything But "Columbine."

Will a similar anti-Moore sentiment infect the Academy? The film isn't so much anti-gun as antiwar — and bracingly, rambunctiously opposed to U.S. military adventures in foreign climes. Oscar voters may not have the balls to reward "Columbine" in on a night in late March when, in all likelihood, American will be dumping its own arsenal on the Iraqi people. But whether or not he wins, Moore ought to get working on another contentious documentary. He could call it "Bombing for Baghdad."

HOPE: "Bowling for Columbine"
THINK: Aaah, "Bowling for Columbine"

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM

"El Crimen del Padre Amaro" / "The Crime of Father Amaro," Mexico
"Hero," China
"The Man Without a Past," Finland
"Nowhere in Africa," Germany
"Zus & Zo," Netherlands

Each year we rant against this category's nomination process (each country's film industry chooses one contender, then a small group of Academy members whittles the list down to five). And each year, they deserve it!

This time, the Spaniards didn't select Almodóvar's "Talk to Her," which many critics and moviegoers thought the best film from any country; so it's not eligible. The superb Palestinian comedy-drama "Divine Intervention" couldn't be nominated because, by the Academy's lights, Palestine is not a country. And in place of some truly audacious, effulgently cinematic works like the Indian "Devdas" and the Russian "Russian Ark," the Oscar committee chose a pedestrian Mexican story of priestly passion and a WWII-Jews-on-the-run-to-Kenya drama — sort of "Out of Africa" with a briss. (It's a Roger Ebert fave.)

Two fine films did make the list: Zhang Yimou's "Crouching Tiger" gonna-be "Hero," which Miramax will open late this year' and Aki Kaurismaki's "Man Without a Past," which won the Grand Jury and Best Actress prizes at Cannes last year. Neither of these films is a lock to win, since the voting procedure in the Academy's final round is as byzantine and exclusive as everything else in this mismanaged category. But I rant.

HOPE: "Hero"
THINK: "The Crime of Father Amaro"

BEST FILM

"Chicago"
"Gangs of New York"
"The Hours"
"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"
"The Pianist"

"Two Towers" may already have outgrossed "The Fellowship of the Ring" at the domestic box office, but it won fewer than half the nominations of its predecessor (six to 13); the Academy may be waiting to bestow its ultimate prize on the concluding episode, due out in December. "The Hours" is the ultimate glum-woman's movie, but it strews too many self-inflicted corpses for the climactic uplift usually required of the top Oscar-winner. "The Pianist" is possible, in part because it's surprisingly lively and ambiguous for its subject, and because Hollywood likes Holocaust movies where the hero survives. Miramax should be happy that "Gangs" won 10 nominations; audiences may finally be encouraged to see the film. That'll be nice, but it won't win Oscar's grand prize.

Have I just eliminated all films but "Chicago"? It's the one relentlessly vital film of the five; it may find Academy members looking for something light, as they did in 1999 when "Shakespeare in Love" beat out "Saving Private Ryan"; and it's been touted as having the big mo. But that steam could evaporate in the next five weeks. And a lot of the buzz for "Chicago" may be a wish that Hollywood could get serious about reviving a grand old genre. And that, I say and sing to you, will never happen.

"The Pianist" has already roared out of nowhere (though it did win at Cannes last year) to boot "About Schmidt" from an expected Best Picture nomination slot. Polanski's semi-memoir could keep chugging. So, just for piquancy, I'll go out on a limb — or, rather, take a walk in the Warsaw Ghetto.

HOPE: "Gangs of New York"
THINK: "The Pianist"

BEST DIRECTOR

Pedro Almodóvar, "Talk to Her"
Stephen Daldry, "The Hours"
Rob Marshall, "Chicago"
Roman Polanski, "The Pianist"
Martin Scorsese, "Gangs of New York"

It's Marty's turn, we hear. Since Scorsese has never won an Oscar, and seeing as he was not even nominated for directing "Mean Streets," "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" or "Taxi Driver," he is, at 60, perhaps overdue for a pity-vote — not that "Gangs" is not also a beautifully directed movie. Almodóvar, 51, somehow keeps topping himself: "Talk to Her" has the emotional depth of "All About My Mother" and a defiant buoyancy besides. Both Marshall and Daldry are 42; Marshall is the comer, and "Chicago" the favorite. Polanski is the grand old gnome, 70 this year, a survivor like his pianist. He won't be attending the Oscars — or if he does, it'll be in handcuffs, since he is wanted on a 25-year-old statutory rape conviction. He could be the most famous no-show directorial nominee since Woody Allen.

HOPE: Scorsese
THINK: Scorsese

• Richard Corliss
• Could this year's Academy Award for Best Picture go to a musical?