Already there's Oscar talk for Gangs of New York

A surprise screening at the recent Cannes Film Festival of a 20-minute clip of director Martin Scorsese's long-awaited and much-delayed epic Gangs of New York - and already, with just under a year to go, there is confident talk of Oscars.

The film, based on a factual account of the rise of the New York Irish and Italian gang rivalries at the beginning of the 20th century, a book first published in the late l920s, stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Henry Thomas, Pete Postlethwaite, Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis and Miramax, the studio behind it, is making the awards-winning predictions after the clip was given a resounding welcome in the South of France.