CANADIAN POP. The Toronto Film Fest’s preview of Oscar attractions

By the end of last year’s bountiful Toronto Film Festival, the 2005 Oscar race had come into focus. It was there we saw “Brokeback Mountain,” “Capote,” “Walk the Line,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “A History of Violence,” “Mrs. Henderson Presents” and “North Country,” movies that would go on to account for three of the five Best Picture and 13 of the 20 acting nominations. The 2006 event, which concluded yesterday, didn’t provide the same clarity. Some critically favored movies had debuted at earlier festivals, and the high-profile “A Good Year” and “All the King’s Men” were considered disappointments. But there is good news to report. The bulk of this year’s Oscar contenders are yet to be discovered. And among the 20-plus movies I saw at Toronto were a couple of near masterpieces, several solid dramas, one side-splitting comedy, and one jaw-dropping indie film where the actors perform some highly outré sex acts. That last one is John Cameron Mitchell’s “Shortbus” (opening Oct. 4), which we’ll get to later. Let’s start with dignity. Well, not much dignity: Let’s begin with “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” a quasi-“Candid Camera” pastiche starring British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (TV’s Ali G) as a village hayseed sent to the U.

S. on a discovery tour by his impoverished ex-Soviet country. Cohen, posing as a Kazakh TV personality, confounds various Americans with his ad-libbed broken English and unpolished manners, and does some stunts – including a naked wrestling scene with his obese traveling companion – that may disgust even those guys in “Jackass.

” “Borat” is a riot. Meanwhile, one of the biggest stars of the festival, George W. Bush, wasn’t in attendance for “Death of a President,” but had a helluva movie demise (his face is superimposed on an actor’s body in an assassination scene). The mockumentary caused a stir pre-screening, but those in attendance considered it much ado about nothing. The movie’s been picked up for distribution by Newmarket Films. On a higher plain, where Oscars roam, some serious contenders did emerge. Kate Winslet seems a sure thing for Best Actress in the role of a disenchanted suburban housewife in Todd Field’s “Little Children” (Oct. 6). Forest Whitaker, sensational as the late dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland” (Sept. 27), is likely to get the Best Actor nod he should have had for 1988’s “Bird.

” And if Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Babel” (Oct. 27) does as well as I expect, it could nab nominations for Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Mexican TV veteran Adriana Barraza. “Babel,” the third film in a trilogy of chance by Iñárritu (after “Amores Perros” and “21 Grams”), is a wrenching drama about a chain reaction started with the gift of a hunting rifle to a Moroccan shepherd. An accidental shooting with that rifle then starts an international incident and tragically affects the families of the shepherd, the victim and the Japanese businessman who gave the rifle away. Pitt is the husband of the woman (Blanchett) shot, and Barraza is their San Diego nanny, who takes their two kids to Mexico for a wedding party that leads to a nightmare at the border. “Babel” could end up on the Best Picture ballot, as could Pedro Almodóvar’s “Volver,” a sublime black comedy about parental love and betrayal that’s made everyone believers in its star, Penelope Cruz. “Volver,” centerpiece (Oct. 7-8) of the coming New York Film Festival, opens Nov. 3. Unlikely as it seems, “Volver” could be one of two Spanish-language films on the Best Picture ballot, along with Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a stunningly original film about a 10-year-old girl who takes refuge in an underground fantasy world in order to defer the horrors of fascist 1944 Spain. It closes the N.

Y. Film Fest on Oct. 15 and opens in theaters Dec. 29. Premiering at Toronto was Douglas McGrath’s “Infamous” (Oct. 13), the second movie in a year about Truman Capote’s relationship with murderer Perry Smith. While it’s sure to be overshadowed by the earlier film (which won Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar), I actually think it’s the better movie, with an eerily exact performance by Brit actor Toby Jones as Capote. Among other Toronto films that I enjoyed were “Copying Beethoven” (Oct. 13), featuring Ed Harris as the composer; “Catch a Fire” (Oct. 27), with Derek Luke as a coal miner-turned-terrorist in apartheid South Africa; and “Deliver Us From Evil” (Oct. 13), a chilling documentary about the Catholic Church’s efforts to protect a pedophile priest. Now, as for “Shortbus” – it’s a trip. The ensemble film about New Yorkers of various orientations seeking carnal fulfillment in a New York sex salon includes some hardcore sexuality that would be specialty items in a DVD porn catalogue. I flinched, but I also laughed. I don’t know if that’s a recommendation.

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