Nikki Finke reports that Steven Spielberg has decreed there will be almost no marketing campaign for his soon-to-open film about the Munich Olympics hostage-taking, even though (or perhaps because) the movie is already seen as an Oscar favorite:

This dicey decision to have no traditional publicity for the film before and after it opens December 23 is the director's alone. He will not even be giving press or broadcast interviews. "The official strategy is for the movie to speak for itself," an insider told me this week. "All they're going to do is just show the movie to people. You have to be Steven Spielberg to get away with that."

But competitors think that may also be because Spielberg may have snagged the cover of Time magazine, which no one will confirm.

Of course, given the subject matter as well as Spielberg's (and Tony Kushner's) involvement, 'Munich ' will obviously generate an awful lot of media attention on its own. And given the buzz around 'Brokeback Mountain,' I suspect we will see a historic Gays vs. Jews Oscar struggle. Swing vote in the Academy will, of course, be the gay Jews.