Could this be Scorsese's time to shine?

Again. Martin Scorsese is up against an actor for a best director Academy Award again.

More unsettlingly, he's facing Clint Eastwood for a second time, two years after Eastwood won the Oscar for "Million Dollar Baby" and Scorsese, represented by "The Aviator," went home empty-handed. Again.

The director of "The Departed," and , in the opinion of many, our country's finest living filmmaker, has now been nominated for six directing Academy Awards. He lost for "Raging Bull" in 1981 to Robert Redford and "Ordinary People." In 1989 with "The Last Temptation of Christ" to Barry Levinson and "Rain Man." (Levinson started out as an actor, too, now that we think of it.) To Kevin Costner and "Dances With Wolves" in 1991, when Marty had "Good Fellas." "Good Fellas"! Again in 2003, when he had "Gangs of New York" and Roman Polanski won for "The Pianist ." (All right, that one we can accept.) Then to Eastwood in 2005.

Oh, and "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver"? Not even nominated.

Even Hollywood is starting to get embarrassed. "The Departed" marks a clear return to form for Scorsese, and his 2005 Dylan documentary, "No Direction Home," was a reminder of just how crucial the filmmaker has been to rock cinema over the years.

He handily won the Golden Globe for best director last week and his momentum toward the Kodak Theatre podium now seems unstoppable.

Would it be churlish to offer the opinion that, as joyously crafted and as fiendishly headlong as "The Departed" is, "Letters From Iwo Jima" may in fact be the better-made movie?

Yes. It is churlish. If it's the entertainment industry's collective guilt that hands Scorsese an Oscar this year, let that statue stand for everything he has done and all the others he should have rightly won.

TY BURR