What if 'Titanic' doesn't win everything?

While basketball fanatics clamor to pick the winners of the NCAA Division I basketball tournament, movie fans often take part in a different gambling endeavor during the month of March - the annual Academy Awards "office pool."

To accurately pick the winners in all of Oscar's 24 categories, not just the best director, actors and screenplays, one must accurately prognosticate winners in the evening's technical categories. This is not an easy task. After all, competitions for best sound effects editing and best original musical or comedy score tend to be less publicized and less predictable than marquee events like the year's best picture.

Already a virtual lock to take home awards for best picture and best director, James Cameron's "Titanic" is the odds-on favorite to win in most of the non-acting, non-directing and non-producing categories as well. Look for it to dominate all nine artistic competitions in which it is nominated. And rightfully so: one could argue that the only remotely questionable technical nod "Titanic" received was that for makeup, especially when its facial preparations are compared to the elaborate alien masks featured in "Men in Black."

Still, one must not get swept up in the "Titanic" wave and ignore some of the night's most important awards. The technical categories recognize accomplishments that compose the backbones, hearts and souls of most films. (Indeed, if nothing else, "Titanic" is a hit because of its monumental special effects, cinematography and art direction.)

So let's be like Cameron - who imagined a Titanic with fabricated lovers Jack and Rose aboard - and dream a bit ourselves. Let's envision an Oscars in which "Titanic" doesn't take home a statuette in more than half of the night's events.

Predicting artistic categories now gets much more difficult. The race for the cinematography award would become hotly contested when the stylized film-noir images of "L.A. Confidential" duke it out with the expressive tones of "The Wings of the Dove" and the lush, jarringly rich colors and vistas of "Kundun."

Editing would come down to the fast-paced action phenomenon "Air Force One" and the slick thriller "L.A. Confidential."

Films rich in sound - be they muscle flicks such as "Con Air" and "Air Force One" or sci-fi dramas such as "Contact" - would make some much-deserved noise. And "Face/Off" and "The Fifth Element," whose respective action sequences were showcases for top-of-the-line sound effects editing, would sound off as well.

The expressionistic ethnic and period wear of "Amistad," "Kundun," "Oscar and Lucinda" or "The Wings of the Dove," would vie to walk away with a scantily clad Oscar statuette.

Art direction would become a category in which the original sets of "Gattaca" and "Men in Black" were pitted against the backdrops of "Kundun" and "L.A. Confidential," which astutely evoke specific times and places.

Some of the movies' most inventive visual effects would rise to the surface when either the thundering dinosaur herds of "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" or the thundering insect herds of "Starship Troopers" storm off with an award.

Acclaimed composer Philip Glass' evocative original dramatic score for "Kundun" would go head-to-head with legendary movie music writer John Williams' "Amistad" composition and former rocker Danny Elfman's "Good Will Hunting" tunes. And obscure original songs like "Good Will Hunting"'s "Miss Misery" and "Con Air"'s "How Do I Live" would have a chance to take home a prize in the absence of the olympian "My Heart Will Go On," from "Titanic."

For best original musical or comedy score, the only technical category in which "Titanic" wasn't - and couldn't be - nominated, animated sensation "Anastasia" would battle with the lighthearted compositions of audience favorites "As Good as It Gets," "The Full Monty," "Men in Black" and "My Best Friend's Wedding."

But don't take my word for it: most of these predictions, like the captain, are destined to go down with the ship.

03-20-98