Now that the 2005 Golden Globe Awards have come and gone, we should have a reasonable idea of who will be the front-runners for Oscars come the end of February, right?

Not so fast.

Whereas last year's Golden Globe winners were nearly identical to the Academy Award winners, this year's race seems a bit fuzzier, as Sunday's Globes left a lot of things up in the air.

First and foremost, the one word that sums up what this year's Oscar race is all about is competition. Certainly what you hope for in any award contest is a competitive playing field, but recently the Academy Awards have seemed to scrap competition in favor of awarding seniority.

Take last year's example of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King sweeping nearly every single category en route to an 11-win finish. No one can doubt that the movie deserved each accolade it received, but in the weeks leading up to the award show many in the entertainment business were predicting the sweep. This was not because it was the best film of the year, but because it was the final chapter in a masterful trilogy that had yet to be honored by Oscar.

We can expect a much different contest this year when the nominees are announced next Tuesday morning.

This year, there are no clear-cut favorites and there are no seniority restrictions that anyone knows of.

This is a wide-open race and there will be many deserving nominees.

If there was such a thing as a shoe-in for this year's Best Actor category, it would have to be Jamie Foxx whose performance in the Ray Charles biography Ray has earned him nearly every major award so far, including a Golden Globe.

Foxx is sure to be joined by fellow Globe winner Leonardo DiCaprio, who took on another real-life character in Howard Hughes for the Martin Scorsese-directed The Aviator.

After those two, the remaining three spots seem to be ripe for the picking.

In Best Actress land, many are predicting not only a nomination but also a win for Hilary Swank, who turned in a gritty performance as a female boxer in Clint Eastwood's well-received Million Dollar Baby. Swank is joined by another Globe winner -- Annette Bening for Being Julia -- as another popular choice for a nomination in this category. As with the Best Actor race, the remaining slots seem to be up for grabs.

Other popular races, such as Best Picture and Best Director, are even more difficult to nail down. Many expect both Eastwood and Scorsese to be nominated in the director category with Eastwood being the favorite only due to his Golden Globe win.

If there happened to be a case of seniority interfering, it may happen here, with many in the entertainment world feeling as though Scorsese -- one of the greatest directors of the past 30 years -- not having an Academy Award is some kind of a crime.

Eastwood and Scorsese's respective films should also enter the Best Picture race, along with the best-reviewed movie of the year, Sideways. Director Alexander Payne's intimate dramedy about two buddies on a wine-tasting trip boasts no big stars and was filmed on a modest budget. However, its character-driven story-line and great acting could carry it far on awards night.

All things considered, expect this year's Academy Awards to be one of the most interesting ceremonies in years.

May the best of the best not go home empty-handed.