Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

It's the final week of Academy Awards nominations voting, with the ballots that were mailed out the day after Christmas due in by Saturday (1/13). And you'd better believe there's a lot of last-minute viewing going on, as Academy members wind up this very short nominations period.

Which pictures will be in the mix? You certainly wouldn't want to bet against "The Queen," "Dreamgirls," "Little Miss Sunshine," "Little Children" or "The Departed." Then there's a trio of features with difficult subject matter in this non-feel-good year, any one of which could wind up in the running: "United 93," "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Babel."

"United 93's" masterful, heartbreaking rendering of the heroic passengers confronted by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, has won widespread acclaim, including Best Picture of the Year honors from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics, among others.

Also heartbreaking is Oscar winner Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima," his companion piece to "Flags of Our Fathers," depicting the WWII Iwo Jima invasion from the Japanese point of view. "Iwo Jima" has the National Board of Review and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association calling it the best film of last year.

And then there's "Babel," the complex, ambitious, multi-story film — also called gimmicky and worse — helmed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu(cq), with Cate Blanchett as a woman shot while riding a bus in Morocco and Brad Pitt as her distressed husband. Although critics have been divided in their opinions of the film, it's won key honors on the road to Oscar, including Best Director and a Palme d'Or nomination at the Cannes Film Festival.

AND: "Babel" sorely needs an Oscar boost. It's been out since October, going as wide as 1,251 screens at one point — and has thus far earned a measly $18 million. Without the attention and heightened attendance nominations could bring, it'll go down as another Brad Pitt box office also-ran.

The star has a checkered record of box office success in the films he's carried in recent years, with "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" looking pretty lonely in the hit column with a domestic gross of around $186 million. (The success of the "Ocean's 11" and "12" flicks are attributable to a winning ensemble of stars in which he is just one part.)

Along the way have been some big disappointments, including "Spy Game," which had a domestic take of $62 million on a $115 million budget.

"Fight Club" took in $37 million domestically with a $63 million budget — despite the avidness of its hard-core fans. The $90 million "Meet Joe Black" did a hardly healthy $44 million on these shores. The $90 million "The Devil's Own" did about $43 million domestically. The $70 million "Seven Years in Tibet" had an anemic domestic box office of $38 million. The 2004 "Troy" looks good in comparison with more than $133 million in domestic grosses — until you realize that it cost about $185 million to make.

WHEN LINES BLUR: Rushing through a grueling production schedule of 65 back-to-back episodes of the telenovela "Watch Over Me" on Fox's sister network, MyNetwork TV, left actor Todd Cahoon hardly knowing who he was. "We shot three years' worth of episodes in 16 weeks," reports the hunky actor, who plays Jack Porter, a former member of an elite (is there any other kind?) Special Forces Unit in the show. "I was doing between 20 and 40 pages of script a day, and by the last two weeks we were doing 24-hour days. At the end of that, I thought I was Jack Porter!"

Cahoon's character serves as bodyguard to a former Miss Universe (Dayanara Torres) on the series — and he admits he found himself thinking about Torres' character, Julia, at the most inopportune times. "It was bizarre. My fiancee would come down and visit me and I'd be thinking about Julia. We had a great big talk about it." He says once he got home and reality set in, he was fine. It's just that "as an actor living truthfully under imaginary circumstances for 16 weeks, getting three hours of sleep a night, shooting over a thousand scenes, you start wondering what's real and what's not."

SHE'S NO. 1: Even famous folks get starstruck, and Leah Remini of the "King of Queens" is no exception. She tells us her favorite person in the business is talk show host/comedian Ellen DeGeneres. "I love her. I absolutely love her. There are people who I enjoy, but there are people who actually genuinely make you laugh," Remini points out. "She knows human behavior. She's so simple. A lot of people talk and want to be funny all the time, but Ellen lets you be funny. She'll let you shine."

(With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster)

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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