NOW I'm hardly an expert, but that needn't get in the way of a column. Dropping the words into this slot doesn't require a hair-splitting knowledge of the matter at hand, just a passing curiosity with an opinion or two tacked on to the side.

There was a time long ago, before children, marriage and all that, when I might have seen many of the films in the Oscar nominations. Reviewing a film or two a week, and watching another for pleasure, let the films stack up behind the eyes.

Nowadays it's mostly children's films, the occasional video (never quite the same) or watching films when they wind up on television (ditto), long after the first flush.

Having Sky should help, but usually it's a case of spotting that a note-worthy film is on and then not having the time. The superior teen-school movie Election did hold my eye, though it was on widescreen which, when viewed on an ordinary-shaped television, is like watching through a letter-box. Magnolia caught the attention late at night, a marvellous film notable for being good while having Tom Cruise in it, something which doesn't often come along.

This year's Oscar nominations are good news for Britain, with home-grown actors and films to the fore. York's own Judi Dench receives a Best Actress nomination for Iris, which also earns Best Supporting nominations for Kate Winslet and the admirable Jim Broadbent. Tom Wilkinson, another interesting actor, is in the best actor category for In The Bedroom.

Gosford Park wins a number of mentions, including a Best Screenplay nomination for Julian Fellowes, the 52-year-old actor turned first-time screen-writer (as an actor, he plays the buffoon-like neighbour in Monarch Of The Glen). It would be fine if Fellowes won, showing that a late switch in life can pay off.

Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring earns 13 nominations, including one for Ian McKellen.

I'd like to be able to say that he's down for Best Actor Sporting A Ridiculous Beard, but actually it's Best Supporting Actor.

I'd also like to be able to say that the Tolkien epic had been set aside for Longest Film To End Up Nowhere Much, but that is not so.

You see, I have seen the Tolkien. And, yes, it is wonderfully realised. It is difficult to imagine anyone doing a better job than Peter Jackson of translating the mammoth Tolkien myth to the screen.

But, and there is one of those coming, at times the film veers towards the territory of heavy metal album covers. Also, there is only so much ponderous pseudo-mythical babble a person can take.

Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone fares less well, earning two small-print nominations of the sort no one bothers to read: Best Art Direction and Best Music. I saw that one too and, with accompanying reservations, liked it as much as the Tolkien.

Well, good luck to them all, even if the Oscars are probably the biggest, tackiest show in town, an exercise in American corporate back-slapping and self-congratulatory cigar chomping.

Giving too many nominations or eventual gongs to one film is just another of the grandstanding Oscar traditions, so Lord Of The Rings stands in a long line of over-statement.

Strange, too, that nominated British films so often look to the past.

The Harry Potter film imagines a fantasy version of idealised public school Britannia, while the Tolkien conjures up, in the Hobbit habitat, a lost never-never land of old rural England.

Gosford Park fits the pattern too, calling on a disappeared place of well delineated social divisions.

So welcome, once more, to the Best Stereotypical Country nomination.

Updated: 12:02 Thursday, February 14, 2002