MOVIES : Dances With Oscar : ‘GoodFellas’ may be cleaning up in the critics’ awards, but Kevin Costner’s Western epic has all the elements Oscar likes

Greek director Theo Angelopoulos’ “Landscape in the Mist” was the best picture of 1990, according to two of The Times’ regular film critics, but don’t mark your Oscar ballots yet. You’re hearing it here first: “Landscape in the Mist” will not win the Academy Award for best picture.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t the best. It’s just . . . foreign, and in the current mood in Hollywood, foreign is only good if you own shares in a studio.

The best picture of the year will not be Martin Scorsese’s “GoodFellas” either, even though that was the best-reviewed film of the year, and the recent winner of both the Los Angeles and New York film critics’ awards. “GoodFellas” is a New York film about a bunch of gangsters, and the predominantly L.A.-based academy members do not cotton to rude New Yorkers.

It won’t be Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part III” either, even though a third Oscar would be a fitting, if overly generous, capper to that series. Coppola has lost a step or two since his Wunderkind days, and giving the second sequel its top prize would be a virtual confession by the academy that its standards have come down since “Godfather II” in 1974.

And it won’t be “The Sheltering Sky,” “Havana” or “Avalon,” even though the directors of those movies--Bernardo Bertolucci, Sydney Pollack and Barry Levinson--swept the Oscar table with their last films. Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” won nine Academy Awards in 1987, Pollack’s “Out of Africa” won six in 1985 and Levinson’s “Rain Man” took home four in 1988. When you make movies as successful as those, your next one is guaranteed to be a disappointment, and for that you must be punished.

So, if none of those, what?

Sungmanitutonka Ob Waci.

That’s Lakota Sioux for “Dances With Wolves”--and you can bank on it. Kevin Costner’s airy Western, about a Civil War fighting man who wins a frontier outpost and is assimilated by the Sioux he meets there, has Oscar written all over it, in large-print English. It is an ambitious film with liberal humanistic elements that overcame faulty early word-of-mouth, a three-hour running time and a tome of subtitles to become both a critical and a commercial success.

“Dances With Wolves” is making Costner a hero in a lot of voters’ eyes: The film has evoked such fond memories of the Western that it could revive the genre and, once again, a leading man has, in his first attempt at directing, shown that actors do know a little something about storytelling (Robert Redford, Paul Newman and Jack Lemmon all danced with the wolves before him).

“Dances” has the Oscar guilt vote in its pocket. It has a strong humanistic point-of-view and seems to right some of the wrongs done in all those cowboy ‘n Injun movies of the past, not least by casting Native Americans in Native American roles. If John Ford were around to direct this film, we might have seen Timothy Hutton playing Kicking Bird.

Whether Costner will win is another question. There was a split last year when “Driving Miss Daisy” was named best picture while the directing award went to “Born on the Fourth of July’s” Oliver Stone. If that occurs again, Scorsese--the most consistent American filmmaker since the fall of Coppola--is the likeliest winner.

There’s one other reasonable scenario: a sweep for Penny Marshall’s “Awakenings,” which opened Friday. The super-sentimental drama about a New York doctor who awakens a ward of comatose patients with experimental drug therapy may win the “Rain Man” vote. It makes people weep and when academy members weep, their votes are often carried along in the torrent.

If Penny Marshall gets a best-director nomination, it will be the first one for an American woman, and though it’s unlikely enough of the Old Boys of the academy would vote for her on the final ballot, the more progressive-minded directors’ branch might put her on it.

In any event, “Dances With Wolves” and “Awakenings” are the only films that meet one of the two minimum Oscar standards (a liberal point of view about a significant social issue, or it makes you cry), and with “The Sheltering Sky” having turned into two hours of bad desert road, there are no other serious contenders for the Grand Prize.

“Dances With Wolves,” “Awakenings,” and “GoodFellas” all figure to be nominated for best picture. The other two spots will probably come from a group that includes Barbet Schroeder’s “Reversal of Fortune,” “The Godfather Part III” and “Avalon.”

On the long-shot list are: Stephen Frears’ “The Grifters,” the best-yet Jim Thompson adaptation but one that may be too dark for the Academy; Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy,” probably done in by Disney’s and Beatty’s super-saturation promotional campaign, and--dare we mention a movie that’s taken in more than $200 million?--Jerry Zucker’s “Ghost.” (Remember: These are impulse choices. Nobody really votes for the best movie.)

In sizing up the fields for the various categories, keep in mind that only in the best-picture category do all 5,000 members of the academy vote; in all other categories, the nominations are made by members of the individual branches. That’s how a “Ghost,” for instance, could slip into the final five for best picture without getting a single other nomination.

Among the directors, Costner is a sure nominee, as is Scorsese, and with the reverence for the whole Corleone saga, Coppola seems a safe bet. Marshall should make it, too, leaving the final spot to be filled from a group that includes Levinson, Bertolucci and Frears.

For a worthy longshot in your office pool, try Jean-Paul Rappeneau, for “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

Jeremy Irons dazzled the critics with his scary-weird Boris Karloff take on Claus von Bulow in Barbet Schroeder’s “Reversal of Fortune,” and he’s a clear favorite in the best actor category of the Oscars as well. There, he will be joined by Robert De Niro, the guinea-pig comatose patient in “Awakenings.” Robin Williams, the doctor in “Awakenings,” may also get a nomination, if enough people cry their brains out.

Gerard Depardieu, whose performance in the title role of “Cyrano de Bergerac” earned him the best actor award at Cannes, rates a better than even chance of an Oscar nomination. The actors branch has often voted in actors from foreign-language films; they did it just last year, giving Isabelle Adjani a best-actress nomination for “Camille Claudel,” in which, coincidentally, she co-starred with Depardieu.

Whether Al Pacino makes it or not depends on how the academy at large responds to “Godfather III.” Opinions of audiences at early screenings have split widely, and Pacino and the film were shut out in the Los Angeles and New York film critics’ voting. Given the relatively short list of serious contenders, the betting here is that Pacino will make it.

Other actors getting some early support in the Oscar huddles that inevitably form at industry get-togethers this time of year are: Costner, who is more highly regarded for his direction of “Dances With Wolves” than his performance in it; Richard Harris, as the gusty Irish cattle rancher in Jim Sheridan’s “The Field”; and Tim Roth, the passionate and growingly mad Vincent van Gogh in Robert Altman’s “Vincent & Theo.”

The best-actress category, as usual and predictably in patriarchal Hollywood, is the weakest of them all. Just think of any woman’s performance that stands out and write her name on your ballot.

Joanne Woodward, one of the film business’s most popular actresses, slipped neatly into the skin of Mrs. Bridge, opposite real-life husband Newman, and has already been named best actress by the New York critics. The L.A. critics tabbed Anjelica Huston, but couldn’t make up their minds which of her performances they liked most--as the head of a child-hating coven in “The Witches,” or the lethal con artist in “The Grifters”--so they will put both titles on her plaque. The academy voters won’t have that trouble; she’ll be nominated for “The Grifters.”

Almost certain to join them on the ballot is Kathy Bates, the fine stage actress who turned in a brilliantly scary performance as a romance novelist’s crazed fan in Rob Reiner’s “Misery.”

Debra Winger’s performance in “The Sheltering Sky” was--besides Vittorio Storaro’s sensational photography--the only interesting diversion in that seat-squirmer, and she should get a nomination on appreciation alone. The same may be said of Mia Farrow’s work in Woody Allen’s wafer-thin “Alice.”

Other actresses in showy roles include Lena Olin in “Havana,” Cher in “Mermaids” and--way back in February--Jessica Lange in “Men Don’t Leave.” But those movies were met with the cool breezes of disinterest and aren’t likely to play any role in the coming Oscar race.

More likely contenders are Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep from Mike Nichols’ likeably lightweight “Postcards From the Edge.”

Among supporting-actress candidates, Lorraine Bracco stood out in a movie that was mostly about, starring and appreciated by men--”GoodFellas.” Bracco, who played Mafia bad guy Ray Liotta’s spunky wife, won the L.A. critics’ award and was the runner-up in New York. She’s in.

Whoopi Goldberg, for once, was perfectly cast--as a bogus medium who discovers powers she doesn’t want--in “Ghost,” and gave a performance too enjoyable to be overlooked.

British stage actress Joan Plowright was the New York critics’ choice for best supporting actress for her performance as the matriarch of the Krichinsky family in “Avalon” and is probably the early favorite for an Oscar.

Others in contention: Glenn Close, who spent as much time narrating from a coma as performing as Sunny von Bulow in “Reversal of Fortune”; Bonnie Bedelia, who actually expanded the role of the accused man’s wife in the film version of “Presumed Innocent”; Dianne Wiest, always popular with both critics and academy members, for “Edward Scissorhands”; and--if “Dances With Wolves” produces a sweep--Mary McDonnell, the adopted Sioux they called Stands With Fist.

The supporting-actor category figures to be loaded with some low-down characters. The year was like that. Among the actors playing gangsters really well:

Joe Pesci was the linchpin of “GoodFellas,” a thug whose gruff humor made us laugh through the first half of the film, and whose cold-bloodedness made us face who we were with in the second half.

Andy Garcia stood out in a star-making performance as Michael Corleone’s illegitimate nephew in “Godfather III.”

It will be hard to ignore Al Pacino’s performance in “Dick Tracy”; Little Al was like a wild cockroach as Big Boy Caprice, the blubbering humpbacked mob leader. He was better as Caprice than as Corleone. Dustin Hoffman deserves a super cameo citation or something for his bit in the same film, as the nervous snitch Mumbles.

If Marlon Brando’s whisper of a performance in “A Dry White Season” was worth a nomination last year, he ought to win it all for his full-bodied parody of his own Don Vito Corleone in “The Freshman.”

John Turturro, a rising character actor, was superb as the lead Mafia weasel in the Coen Brothers’ “Miller’s Crossing.”

If the gang players don’t dominate the category, other contenders include: Graham Green, the marvelous face of Kicking Bird in “Dances With Wolves”; Bruce Davison, the agonized lover of a dying AIDS victim in “Longtime Companion”; and Armin Mueller-Stahl, patriarch of the Krichinskys in “Avalon.”