Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman in Sweeney Todd Peter Mountain/Courtesy of DreamWorks

Big names like Mike Nichols, Aaron Sorkin, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman guaranteed that Academy voters would check out Universal's late-year opener Charlie Wilson's War. But they also meant that voters would expect something truly great. What they got was light-hearted and fun, but not a surefire Oscar heavyweight.

To build momentum, Paramount Vantage started screening Paul Thomas Anderson's violent American epic There Will be Blood, based on Upton Sinclair's sprawling oil saga, during the week of Nov. 12 before releasing it in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 26. It won't widen until January. Early reviews from critics were rapturous, and the L.A. Film Critics awarded the film four prizes, including picture, director, production designer, and actor, for Daniel Day-Lewis, who leads the actor pack. Day-Lewis won an Oscar early in his career for My Left Foot; his only real competition comes from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street's neophyte warbler Johnny Depp, who has been nominated twice and never won. DreamWorks didn't unveil Tim Burton's sanguine R-rated Stephen Sondheim musical until after Thanksgiving because the movie simply wasn't finished. DreamWorks started running "for your consideration" trade ads and mailed screeners in early December in advance of the opening on 1200 screens December 21.

Also coming in under the wire was the heart-tugging '30s-era The Great Debaters, Denzel Washington's second directing gig. Harvey Weinstein is pushing Washington in the supporting-actor category for his role as a real-life college debate coach in '30s Texas, so he can avoid competing with himself in American Gangster. Historically, the Academy has a soft spot for actor-directors, although this year The Great Debaters may have gaining more traction than Ben Affleck's Boston mystery Gone Baby Gone, Sean Penn's survival adventure Into the Wild, or Robert Redford's political treatise Lions for Lambs, an already legendary bomb with critics and audiences alike. Gone Baby Gone and Into the Wild both grabbed raves for their ensemble casts, however, and should earn supporting nods for Amy Ryan and Hal Holbrook, respectively.

Indie pics face a challenge if they don't get the right kind of attention early on. Roadside Attractions timed the drama Starting Out in the Evening, starring Frank Langella, so that media attention would peak after the film opened Nov. 23 and widened into 10 cities on Dec. 14, the same week the Golden Globe nominations were announced. Unfortunately, the movie failed to earn a Globe or Screen Actors Guild nods. Now the picture has to sustain enough momentum to play through January.