by Michael Cieply, Inside.com
Rankings on the Inside Line are calculated daily, based on a contender's pedigree, awards, reviews, press, promotional campaign and buzz.
If Web heads ruled the Oscars -- and they don't, so we're not assigning any points on their say-so -- Gladiator (No. 1 on the Inside Line with a score of 346.3) would sweep the big night.
AltaVista, the Internet search engine, tracked queries for various contenders for the week ended Feb. 17, when the nominations were out and public interest in the Oscars was particularly intense.
Everybody's favorite Roman epic, as it turns out, dominated four out of the five categories monitored. Among Best Picture contenders, Gladiator captured 44 percent of the searches, followed by Crouching Tiger with 31 percent (though it's our No. 3 with 284.8 points), Traffic with 13 percent (it's our No. 4 with 258.6 points), Chocolat with 7 percent (it's our five with 220.5 points), and Erin Brockovich with just 5 percent (it's our two with 310.3 points).
The truly puzzling thing about Brockovich's lack of appeal for the Web-searching crowd is that star Julia Roberts (our No. 1 with 441.2 points) captured an amazing 83.4 percent of the searches among Best Actress contenders. Almost nobody was looking for anybody else. Juliette Binoche (our No. 4 with 208.5 points) grabbed 11.1 percent of the searches, while Laura Linney (our two with 259.8 points) pulled 4.5 percent. The best that can be said of Joan Allen (our No. 3 with 238.0 points) and Ellen Burstyn (our five with 199.9 points) is that their numbers didn't go negative. Allen had 0.6 percent of the searches, Burstyn 0.4 percent.
Among directors, Ridley Scott (our three with 299.4 points) pulled slightly more than half the searches, while Steven Soderbergh's two films (he's No. 2 by us for Brockovich with 332.4 points and No. 4 for Traffic with 256.1 points) won him only 18.2 percent. Ang Lee (our No. 1 with 377.2 points) grabbed 29.6 percent, while Stephen Daldry (No. 5 in our book with 196.3 points) was the least sought-after person in the study, pulling just 0.2 percent of director searches.
Gladiator's Joaquin Phoenix (our No. 5 with 242.5 points) ruled among supporting actors, with 52.9 percent. (For some reason, AltaVista didn't even track the supporting actresses).
Among Best Actor candidates, it was Gladiator's Russell Crowe on top with 59.1 percent (though he's our No. 2 with 263.2 points). Perhaps ominously, Tom Hanks (our No. 1 with 310.2 points) came in a distant second, with 22.5 percent, while the rest of the pack lined up in very rapidly descending order.
The numbers don't say much about prizes, except, maybe, People's Choice awards. But studio executives might want to check in with AltaVista before writing the next big check.
� 2001 Inside.com