Oscar Buzz for Al Gore

Al Gore, Academy Award winner?

The ex-vice president may have lost the big one back in 2000 against President Bush, but Gore's radical environmentalism, as showcased in his new feature-length documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," may yet turn him into a winner.

"The talk in Hollywood circles is that [Gore's movie] is textbook Oscar-bait," reports Canada's National Post.

Hollywood blogger Jeffrey Wells is convinced that the film is the odds on favorite to win the best feature documentary Oscar in March, 2007.

"It may or may not emerge as the year's finest doc," writes Wells on hollywood-elsewhere.com. "But what it says is so damned important . . . and it makes its case so persuasively that any Academy member with a smidgen of concern about the perils of global warming is going to want to give it the Oscar so that more people browsing in video stores will be inclined to rent or buy it."

A web promo for Gore's flick calls it, "By far the most terrifying film you will ever see . . . Humanity is sitting on a time bomb."

Gore himself predicted earlier this month that if the U.S. doesn't stop global warming, "we will destroy the habitability of the planet."

The super-green ex-vice president has apparently begun campaigning for his Oscar already, starting with a trip to Canada.

"Gore's pilgrimage to Canada is partly to spread the word, partly to start the drip of Oscar buzz," reports the Post. "Film-and-media-happy Toronto has turned into a can't-miss stop on these sort of trails, especially for these small films."

Still, the paper warns: "While Gore is the [Oscar] front-runner now, there's another well-known do-good auteur who might give him a run for a golden statuette: Michael Moore, whose upcoming film, 'Sicko,' is said to be a wretched take-down of the U.S. health system that is likely to be unveiled in September."

A Gore vs. Moore runoff? Let's hope there are no hanging, dimpled chads when the Academy casts its votes.