For Palisadian Kenneth Turan, who works fulltime watching an overwhelming number of movies produced every year and writing about them, the Oscar contest is always an exciting crescendo. But less so this year, the Los Angeles Times film critic told Optimist Club members Tuesday morning. “I wish I was coming here in a more exciting year,” said Turan, who took over the prognosticator’s role once filled by retired Times critic Charles Champlin. Speaking of his Times colleague, Turan was humbled. “It means a lot to me to follow Chuck Champlin; he is a great gentleman in the reviewing business.” Back to the contest, Turan said that the projected Oscar winners on February 29 have been uniformly agreed upon, although he did hold out the possibility that there will be some surprises. “The Academy is just like the Optimist Club, except bigger. What is a good film is a matter of individual taste. Nobody picks the best film, they pick what they like.” Characterizing his critical remarks as probably pretty close to what everyone is saying, Turan offered his list of winners, leading off with “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” as the Best Picture. “There really isn’t another film that has this much enthusiastic support,” he said. “Brian Helgeland’s ‘Mystic River’ is good, but it’s running against a trilogy. ‘Lord of the Rings’ has been nominated three times before and there’s a feeling that the Academy would be remiss if they didn’t pick this film. The Tolkien adaptation was an idea that nobody wanted to make, Turan explained. All the studios turned it down, no doubt daunted by the prospect of investing hundreds of millions of dollars into something that might have been a flop. Turan also gave the nod to director Peter Jackson for taking on just such a challenge, which required shooting three films simultaneously and at several different locations. He also credited Jackson for not only engaging the audience with technological wizardry, but also eliciting good acting. In the Best Actor and Actress categories, Turan narrowed the field to two-person races. While he predicts that Sean Penn will win for “Mystic River,” he agreed that Bill Murray’s laconic performance in “Lost In Translation” probably was the best role of his career. “It’s possible he will win, but the Academy mostly goes for serious performances,” Turan said, referring to the powerful role Penn enacted in “Mystic River.” “Sean has been nominated four times, including for ‘I Am Sam.’ If you’re nominated for ‘I Am Sam,’ you’ll win for “Mystic River.” If Turan’s serious role theory pans out, Charlize Theron, who makes an incredible transformation into the hooker who takes grisly vengeance on men in “Monster” will win the Oscar for Best Actress. He noted that the Academy voters also like the “stunt aspect of casting, people playing against type.” Theron, a beautiful woman, gained a lot of weight, put on false teeth and blotched up her face to play the role. The dark horse for Best Actress could be Diane Keaton in “Something’s Gotta Give,” if the Academy members want to acknowledge a good performance but also to honor older actresses doing good work. In the supporting categories, Turan puts his money on Tim Robbins in “Mystic River” and Renee Zellweger in “Cold Mountain.” In discussing the Best Original Screenplay, Turan once again predicted that “Lord of the Rings” would win. “The question is, is there ‘Hobbit’ fatigue or will they want there to be a [‘Lord of the Ring’] sweep? Often the Academy will give each nominated film for Best Picture an Oscar in another category so that the picture finds a place to win.” For Best Original Screenplay, Turan saw the contest as coming down to second-generation filmmakers: Sofia Coppola (daughter of Frances Ford Coppola) for “Lost in Translation” and Jim Sheridan (“My Left Foot,” “In The Name of the Father”) and his daughters Naomi and Kirsten Sheridan for “In America.” Who makes up this amorphous Academy? one Optimist wondered. The Academy has about 5,000 members, including about 1,000 actors and an average of 300 in the other categories, such as writers, directors, art directors and cinematographers. Each branch nominates the films in their category, but the entire Academy, including executives and publicists, votes on all the categories. Conscientious Academy members will watch all the films nominated, said Turan-a daunting task at best, and impossible if the Motion Picture Association of America had barred the use of tapes as they had threatened to do to minimize piracy. But Turan endorsed the use of tapes enthusiastically, explaining that the nature of the Academy changed when tapes came in and gave small pictures a good shot. Citing Newmarket Films’ “Whale Rider,” which garnered a Best Actress nomination for star Keisha Castle-Hughes, Turan said that Newmarket sent out a lot of tapes early. “Smaller companies count on these tapes, it’s life or death for small films.” Another Academy rule change propelled Brazil’s “City of God” onto the radar screen with four nominations, including Best Achievement in Directing for Fernando Meirelles. This film was nominated because any foreign film that had not been nominated for Best Foreign Film the year before and opened in theaters the following year was eligible for consideration in any category. “These four nominations show the adventuresomeness of the Academy,” Turan said. Having reviewed for the Times for the last 12 years, Turan says that he does not worry about being pressured to write a favorable or unfavorable review. “Films have a life and death of their own, regardless of critics,” he said. “You have to do what you feel.” The relationship between box-office success and quality films boils down to the audience. “The reality of today’s movie business is that younger people, under 25, go to the movies once a week. It’s a small population, but most of the young people who go to the movies like them. Films are expensive, $60 to $120 million, and tens of millions of dollars are spent on advertising. Therefore, they dumb down the movies, and worry about anything that will turn people off.” Turan advised the Optimist audience to go to more movies, pick carefully and read reviews.

At about 7:10 p.m. last Friday, a fully loaded cement truck weighing an estimated 66,000 pounds rammed into a parked car on the west side of Palisades Drive just above Michael Lane, propelling it 200 feet down the street towards the center strip. No one was in the car, a black Nissan Altima owned by Highlands resident Rory Ritts. Skid marks indicate that the Mack truck jumped the sidewalk after striking the Nissan from behind, crashed into several trees and broke a main water sprinkler valve on the embankment before veering across the street and turning over on the center strip, its cab crushed. The driver, Vincent Parks, who managed to walk away from the vehicle, was treated at UCLA Medical Center and released early Saturday morning. “My back still hurts,” Parks, 41, told the Palisadian-Post on Tuesday afternoon. “They said I bruised my ribs from the impact. I’m on pain medication.” According to both the LAPD and firemen on the scene, the accident was caused by brake failure. “Apparently the brakes overheated,” said Captain Bill Ernst of Station 23. Parks said that he has been driving trucks for five years, but has been working for Associated Ready Mix for only four months. He said he received basic training on driving a Mack in the first month of his employment and the particular truck he was driving last Friday (a 1989 model) was inspected a week earlier. Doyle Davis, a dispatcher with Associated, said that company trucks are inspected every three months, and that unless they pass, “they don’t go out on the road.” Friday’s near-disaster began earlier when Parks, slowed by traffic on PCH, was 90 minutes late making a scheduled delivery to a Highlands residential construction site. Discovering when he reached the site that his contact had left, he decided to make his way back down Palisades Dr., but not before trying to get in touch with his dispatcher. When his cell phone didn’t work, Parks said he thought briefly of dumping his load, as he was not sure the aging truck would make it back down to Sunset, “given the weight it was carrying.” Parks said his troubles continued when he tried to “pump the brakes.” When he realized that “they were gone” and he continued to pick up speed, he said he thought the safest thing to do would be to crash into a big tree. “It was either that or keep going down the hill head first.” At that point he thought he had “a 50/50 chance of surviving this.” He said he missed the first tree he targeted and slammed into the Nissan instead. From there, he remembers hitting a light pole before heading straight for a tree in the median. He said he didn’t recall the truck rolling on its side or how he got out of the cab. And he has no idea how fast the truck was going before it crashed. “All I know is that the weight of the truck kept pushing me forward,” said Parks, a father of two. “I thought of trying to jump out but realized that was impossible. So I just did what I could to stop the truck.” Rory Ritts, the director of product development for a large mail-order house, has been parking his 2001 Nissan in the same spot for the past two years-across the street from his townhouse at 1646 Palisades Dr., where he lives with his wife Linda and their three children. Ritts, 50, said that he had been home for about 15 minutes on Friday and hadn’t even finished unpacking his car for the long weekend when “I heard this crash. And then another crash. And then silence. I ran downstairs to look outside and noticed my car wasn’t there anymore. Looking down the hill, I spotted what looked like a monster lying on the median and my car was next to it, blocking the road.” Ritts then saw the driver walking around the wreck, and described a scene that “looked like a war zone. There was smoke and the smell of fuel, and cement and water everywhere. I saw some of my personal belongings on the street. There were papers from my briefcase, some samples I was working on, my flashlight, trade magazines and my garage door opener, which was smashed to bits.” Ritts said he lost everything that was in the Nissan in the crash, including his laptop, dry cleaning, prescription eyeglasses, tools, a baby stroller and a Valentine’s gift for his wife. “It was a silver bracelet. The police think it probably disintegrated on impact. It’s a miracle no one was killed. It was lucky Friday the 13th for both of us, I guess.” Parks, nursing his wounds this week, feels the same way. “I’m just so grateful no one else was hurt. I apologize to Mr. Ritts and what I did to his car. I just tried to steer the truck out of the way, as best I could.”

Mike Skinner, a longtime resident and youth sports coach who directed the community-driven campaign to expand, renovate and enhance the four playing fields at the Palisades Recreation Center, has been named Citizen of the Year by the Palisadian-Post. He will be honored on April 29-along with the Golden Sparkplug winners-at the 57th Annual Citizen of the Year banquet at the Riviera Country Club. “Mike began pushing for the long-needed overhaul of the playing fields in 1999, after the new gym was completed,” said Post Publisher Roberta Donohue. “When he realized that city funding for this project simply wasn’t going to happen, he came up with a plan to have the community raise the funds and hire a private contractor to rebuild the fields in accordance with city regulations, then turn everything back over to the city. “After receiving approval from the Dept. of Recreation and Parks, Mike’s group set a goal of $850,000 last March (later raised to $950,000 to provide a $100,000 maintenance fund for upkeep of the fields), and completion of the entire project by October. Miraculously, the fields were ready for AYSO soccer games on November 8 and the bills have been paid.” The state-of-the-art facility will have its official dedication during the Palisades Pony Baseball Association’s traditional Pancake Breakfast festivities on Saturday, March 20. Bob Benton, the town’s sporting goods owner and perennial commissioner of the PPBA, was among those nominating Skinner for Citizen honors. “As someone who has been deeply involved in the affairs of our community for the past 22 years,” Benton wrote, “I have come to understand that a single individual, through his own selfless efforts, can greatly affect the greater good.” He pointed out Skinner’s contributions as a youth football, basketball and baseball coach, and his active role on the Park Advisory Board since its organization in 1998. “But by far the greatest task that Mike set for himself was spearheading what became known as the Field of Dreams project.” “It is difficult to overstate the enormousness of this undertaking,” Benton continued. “A few years ago as the City was filling Potrero Canyon, they built a large wall around our park that left much undeveloped space on the mesa; they took out all the trees that bounded our park; and told us that there was no money to fix anything. Our park was a mess. [At Mike’s urging], the PPBA board of directors decided that we would try and build the project. Mike was our choice to head up the committee. What a choice! He has spent countless hours in meetings, phone calls, design consultations and fundraising. He met with neighbors concerned with parking, crowds and lighting issues. He moderated the often contentious debates over the inclusion of a skatepark, urging mutual understanding between the parties. It was Mike who used his own money to fund the preliminary designs and surveys necessary to get the project rolling, using the reservoir of good will he has built up over the years to urge local officials and prominent residents to get behind the project. Mike commissioned a color rendering and model of the new park that would illustrate for the community what was possible and he would cart it out on Opening Day and the Fourth of July to rally support. And Mike’s only motivation was to replace a park that he truly felt was antiquated and dangerous. Said Benton: “When it became clear that no public funds were available for a project of this size, Mike organized a 100 percent community-based fundraising campaign that has successfully raised enough to money to complete the park. (It is important to remember that he has done all this despite the fact that his own kids are now too old to participate in any of our community-based sports activities.) But Mike did not stop with the completion of our beautiful new park. Along with the Park Advisory Board and a select group of dedicated volunteers, he is continuing his fundraising efforts to ensure that the park is maintained by the community and does not fall into the state of disrepair we saw with the old fields. The result of this gargantuan effort is a wonderful new park, with larger and safer playing fields that are available for both youth and adult sports, joggers, dog lovers and those who just want to enjoy the best of what our community has to offer. “I was taking my usual walk to the park one day in early November to check on the building progress and happened to see Mike out in the middle of the fields mowing the lawn atop the new tractor mower that was purchased as part of the new maintenance program,” Benton concluded. “The 5- and 6-year-olds were about to start playing AYSO soccer on the new fields and Mike wanted to make sure everything was in tip-top shape. Mike Skinner is a busy man who runs his own business here on the Westside and has his own family obligations. But it did not at all surprise me that he would get out there and personally see to it that the children of our community had a safe place to play.” Writing on behalf of the Park Advisory Board to nominate Skinner for the “Citizen” award, member Charlie Castle said: “The wonderful result of Mike’s knowledge and leadership…is complete renovation of the fields, including leveling, installing sprinklers and grass, removing old lights and installing new ones, new seating, dugouts and beautiful landscaping-all quickly done with a minimum of inconvenience for park users and neighbors.” “Citizen” banquet tickets are now on sale. The cost is $60 per person and seating is limited. Please make checks payable to Pacific Palisades Citizen-of-the-Year Dinner and mail them to P.O. Box 725, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272 or bring them to the Palisadian-Post office at 839 Via de la Paz.

In characteristic fashion, Tiger Woods celebrates a birdie putt during last year’s Nissan Open at Riviera Country Club. Trailing by 11 strokes on the final day, he closed with a tournament-low 65 to finish tied for fifth. Uncharacteristically, Woods has yet to win this tournament, which begins today, in six tries.