Best Actress

It's Oscar time and five nominees for Best Actress anxiously wait for the big night. All of them have skeletons in their walk-in closets, but one has rummaged through hers to get a gun for her Chanel bag. Veteran Hollywood flak Kane keeps his eyebrows firmly arched as he dishes out his tale of intrigue among Hollywood's oversexed and underoccupied, filling in the back story of each contender bit by juicy bit. Most of the fun is in figuring out who is based on whom. Although actual names and places are scattered along the way, made-up details tend toward the grotesque, and the venom-tongued narrative is less imaginatively wicked or high-spirited than recent L.A. gossip-fests like Bruce Wagner's I'm Losing You, Christian McLaughlin's Sex Toys of the Gods or Gary Indiana's Resentment. Kane's addition to this crowded field is funny and catty, but a little goes a long way: the mystery subplot is just a pretext for skewering the characters, and Kane's isn't the sharpest skewer in the drawer. (Feb.)