NO MAJOR SURPRISES IN ACADEMY PICKS

This was the year in which a dog whose name was submitted as co-author of an adapted screenplay won a nomination, while an actor whose character’s body was shared by a woman did not. Several of the most-seen films, such as “Ghostbusters” and “Beverly Hills Cop,” didn’t get any nominations for their stars, but some of the least-watched movies, such as “The Pope of Greenwich Village” and “Country,” did.

In short, these were the typically eccentric and true-to-form, expected and unexpected, popular and controversial Academy Award nominations. If there were no major surprises, there were several small ones, especially Jeff Bridges as a best-actor nominee for “Starman,” outdistancing Steve Martin, Howard Rollins Jr. and Jack Lemmon in the process. The 1984 Oscar nominations didn’t make “Tightrope” star Clint Eastwood’s day either.

Woody Allen, a director who has never been that popular with the Hollywood establishment, made a comeback this year with two surprise nominations for his screenplay and direction of “Broadway Danny Rose,” one of the early 1984 releases that seemed particularly distant when the cognoscenti were predicting Oscar favorites.

Allen displaced Norman Jewison as a directorial nominee, which represented one of several blows against “Soldier’s Story,” the kind of film one would have expected the academy voters to embrace with enthusiasm.

Only Adolph Caesar was nominated from “Soldier’s Story’s” fine cast of black performers. Caesar joined a supporting-actor category filled with a majority of non-white performers for the first time in memory, the others including Haing S. Ngor and Noriyuki (Pat) Morita, best known for his role in TV’s “Happy Days.”

Because of his real-life inspiration for his screen performance, Ngor evokes an uncan ny memory of a previous winner in this category: Harold Russell, a veteran who lost both his hands in World War II, and acted the part of a crippled veteran in the Oscar-winning “The Best Years of Our Lives” in 1946. Ngor is a Cambodian refugee who was tortured by the Khmer Rouge before fleeing the country.

The biggest in-joke of the nominations has to be screenwriter Robert Towne’s use of the pseudonym P. H. Vazak as co-author with Michael Austin of “Greystoke.”

Towne was originally set to write and direct the movie when he had a falling out with Warner Bros., the film’s distributor, he asked that a pseudonym, his sheep dog’s name, be substituted for his own on the credits. The year’s other major pseudonym, the Sam O. Brown moniker used by Blake Edwards to disguise his work as writer on “City Heat,” did not get nominated.

The major movie studios’ preoccupation with expensive special effects was also affirmed by three Oscar nominees for best visual effects: “Ghostbusters,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “2010.”

Also recognized were the advances in screen makeup, with “Amadeus,” “Greystoke” and “2010” all nominated. The latter film may have some voters scratching their heads, and wondering if spacesuits constitute makeup, but they should eventually remember the rapidly aging Keir Dullea as astronaut Dave Bowman.

Clearly, however, the academy is still voting for class over crass. “Beverly Hills Cop” received a best-screenplay nomination, even though star Eddie Murphy used the same combination of words several times over, but otherwise, films considered brilliant rather than box-office won the most nominations.

This trend contradicts earlier Oscar history. In the 1960s, blockbuster movies, such as “The Sound of Music” and “Oliver!” captured the hearts of audiences and the ballots of academy voters. In the 1970s, such popular films as “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” were nominated for best picture; they didn’t win, however.

But since “E.T.” three years ago, few commercial blockbusters even see a best-picture nomination, a trend that seems painfully obvious this year, when none of the five best-picture nominees have earned in film rentals the $36 million it cost to make “Ghostbusters.”

Still, the 1984 Oscar race should be one of the most interesting in recent times, with no clear winner now apparent, and various enthusiasts talking of the “momentum” of their particular favorites. Too bad P. H. Vazak won’t be able to attend the post-awards Governor’s Ball.