First and foremost, Gerard Kennedy will kick off the “Tech Support” column Thursday, a segment of In Contention that I am very excited about. The technical branches of the Academy are terribly unrepresented by the media, and it’s time to lend them some credence. We’ll get into that later in the week.

Nothing much else in the way of “news” has come down the pike in the last few weeks, though some category disputes are beginning to take shape.

Rumor has it that Dame Judi Dench pressured a lead campaign for her performance in “Notes on a Scandal,” while co-star Cate Blanchett will potentially be relegated to the supporting arena. Both may still go into the lead category at the end of the day, however. Blanchett will be pushed as a lead in Warner Bros.’s “The Good German.” Meanwhile, all performances in “Bobby” will be pushed as supporting, the standout being Sharon Stone from most accounts. Things are still iffy regarding the campaigns of Jennifer Hudson and Beyónce Knowles in “Dreamgirls,” though most seem to think supporting for the former, lead for the latter.

Additionally, talk continues to circle around Peter O’Toole’s performance in Roger Michell’s “Venus,” which will unveil at Toronto. O’Toole is one of the classic cases, if not THE classic case, of an individual due for Oscar recognition in a grotesque manner. The Academy, you’ll remember, decided a few years back to give him the “sorry we never gave you a real Oscar” award, otherwise known as the “Honorary Oscar,” and O’Toole infamously declined initially. He later accepted graciously, however. There was also a film floating around at one point stirring some awards talk for the actor called “The Final Curtain” which went nowhere, and so O’Toole’s Oscar destiny seemed in limbo.

Now with “Venus,” in which O’Toole portrays, according to IMDb, one of a “pair of veteran actors (whose life) gets turned upside down after they meet a brash teenager,” things might be looking up. That synopsis is not much to go on, sure, but with the early word being so positive, Miramax may have a slam dunk on their hands. It’s something to keep an eye on. Leslie Phillips, Vanessa Redgrave and Jodie Whittaker also star.

Speaking of the Best Actor race, that Ed Harris vehicle, “Copying Beethoven,” has finally secured distributive backing from MGM and The Weinstein Company. Tackling the role of – you guessed it – Ludwig von Beethoven, Harris could be a formidable contender in the Best Actor arena, should there be a campaign of consequence. No one knows much of anything about the actual film or performance in any case, and that makes the third high profile lead actor possibility for Miramax (along with O’Toole and Richard Gere in “The Hoax”).

That tid-bit brings me to another point of curiosity this year, regarding the ubiquitous biopic of film awards season. What is striking this year is how outbalanced the typical biopic subjects are by the more obscure or otherwise “second-tier” real-life representations.

As mentioned, Ed Harris (“Copying Beethoven”) and Forest Whitaker (“The Last King of Scotland”) will be taking on Ludwig von Beethoven and Idi Amin respectively. In addition, Kirsten Dunst portrays Marie Antoinette in Sofia Coppola’s film of the same name, while Toby Jones takes his own stab at Truman Capote in “Infamous.” Helen Mirren will rock out Queen Elizabeth II in the uber-buzzed “The Queen” and Nicole Kidman as Diane Arbus in “Fur” should be a trippy experience. But as for your “typical” biopics, that’s about it.

However, just take a quick glance at the huge line of somewhat less obvious biopic characterizations coming down the pike:

There’s Ben Affleck as haunted television “Superman” star George Reeves in “Hollywoodland,” Richard Gere as Howard Hughes biographer trickster Clifford Irving in “The Hoax,” Jared Leto as John Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman in “Chapter 27” and Vin Diesel as righteous defendant Giacomo DiNorscio in “Find Me Guilty.”

Oh, I’m not done. Don’t forget Viggo Mortensen as famed Spanish mercenary Capitán Diego Alatriste in “Alatriste,” Keisha Castle-Hughes as the Virgin Mary in “The Nativity Story,” Susan Sarandon as tobacco billionaire Doris Duke in “Doris and Bernard,” Renée Zellweger as children’s book author Beatrix Potter in “Miss Potter,” Derek Luke as South African freedom fighter Patrick Chamusso in “Catch a Fire” and, of course, Nicolas Cage and Michael Peña as Ground Zero survivors John McLoughlin and Will Jimenos in “World Trade Center.”

Are you beginning to see my point? It’s as if filmmakers have finally, as a whole, looked to the intricacies of little-known personas for their biopic fix this season. That said, most of these films seem to be lagging behind in the prospective awards derby, with just “World Trade Center” and “Catch a Fire” boasting, at first long glance, any major awards potential of consequence. But things can change on a dime, and no one knows anything, right?

Most of the films in play will start screening in earnest in the next few weeks. Todd Field’s “Little Children” has been getting a few looks. It’ll run at Telluride and, perhaps, Toronto. “Bobby” will likely get a look or two before that “work in progress” screening at Toronto, and Sony hopefuls “All the King’s Men” and “Stranger Than Fiction” will screen as well, so surely be on the lookout for the typical embargo breakers on those flicks.

In the meantime…there’s nothing to talk about! David Poland surprisingly started his Oscar column last week at Movie City News, kind of proving the point that the air is dry (what with the rehash of everything we’ve been discussing for a number of weeks). Before long, the Variety and Hollywood Reporter special issues will begin editorial preparation, and those rascals at the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times will get their butts in gear as well. It’ll be interesting to see what they do this year, as pointed out in the focus of last week’s column. But I’m going to cut everything short today. Hopefully we’ll actually be somewhere next week.

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Previous Oscar Columns:
080/7/06 - "Don't Knock Masturbation; it's Sex with Someone I Love"
07/31/06 - "Old and New, the Oscar Season Approaches"