The art of being Clint Eastwood during Oscar season is to appear to be above all the nonsense while at the same time being right in the thick of it while playing the community — press, industry, Academy members — like Jascha Heifetz on a Stradivarius. And yet…

As masterful as Letters From Iwo Jima is (i.e., everyone agrees it’s heads and shoulders above Flags of Our Fathers), I knew it was over and done as a fifth-slot Best Picture contender when (a) a certain journalist told me he couldn’t get his wife to sit down and watch a Letters screener he’d been sent, and (b) when I stuck my head into a 9:30 pm showing of Letters last Tuesday or Wednesday night at Manhattan’s Lincoln Square theatre and saw…oh, maybe 40 people. Near-great film, awesome performance by Watanabe, etc. But it’s looking like an Oscar also-ran.