LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - With the Academy Awards days away, film industry experts are betting that Clint Eastwood's gut-wrenching boxing drama "Million Dollar Baby" will knock out its main rival, Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," an epic tale of the days when billionaire Howard Hughes was flying high.

It is not often that the Oscars see two giants of American cinema duke it for both the best director and best picture awards and if Scorsese was an actor, who knows, he could be fighting Eastwood in that category as well.

For the 74-year-old former Spaghetti Western star has a hat trick worth of nominations this year that also includes a best actor's nod for his performance as the crusty fight manager Frankie Dunn in "Million Dollar Baby."

Two other actors from the film are not only up for awards but considered favorites in their categories -- Hilary Swank for best actress and Morgan Freeman for best supporting actor.

Eastwood has never won a best actor's award and is not likely to do so this year even though he has been a commanding on-screen presence for decades, playing such classic film heroes as "Dirty Harry," the San Francisco cop who challenges street punks to "make my day."

Jamie Foxx is the odds-on favorite to win best actor for his portrayal of Ray Charles in "Ray."

Eastwood has won a best picture and best director's Oscar before -- in 1993 for "Unforgiven" and many say his "Mystic River" should have won last year's best picture award over the third and final Hobbit drama, "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King."

Fairness is not necessarily an Oscar trait and some of greatest filmmakers have not won a gold statuette, including Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles. Scorsese, one of the giants of American movie making, is in their company in more ways than one -- he never won an Oscar despite such films as "Raging Bull," "Taxi Driver" and "Goodfellas."

But this year the 62-year-old Scorsese, who is recognized by his peers as a world-class expert on filmmaking, is supposed to have his best shot in decades because he produced a film of the sort that traditionally wins Oscars.

Like such previous such winners as "Gladiator," "Titanic" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," "The Aviator" is an epic and an epic about Hollywood's glamour days of the 1930s and 40s no less.

ONLY IF ...

It snared 11 nominations, the most of any film this year, and two of its stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett, are also vying for Oscars.

And maybe it would be the front-runner if "Million Dollar Baby" had not joined the Oscar fight at the last minute with an early release. Also nominated for best film this year are comedy "Sideways," "Ray," and "Finding Neverland," about Peter Pan's creator, J.M. Barrie.

While "Aviator" is filmmaking on a grand scale, including a harrowing air crash, "Million Dollar Baby" is its near polar opposite -- small in scale and as dramatic, touching and troublesome a story as you could find.

In fact, one of the debates raging about the film is whether critics should give away its plot. Critics have kept mum but several conservative groups have waged such a "noisy" campaign against the film's main plot twist that details have spilled out all over the place. Several newspaper pieces carried the caveat that "If you don't to know what happens don't read on."

Time Magazine film critic Richard Schickel, a friend of both Scorsese's and Eastwood's, says he is torn by the decision thrust on the Academy's just over 5,000 voters. He likes both films but thinks that in the end -- small will beat big.

"Marty has made a marvelous film. I am very impressed by its epic scale and the way it depicts American madness and Academy members respect that. But they really love Clint's movie and in Oscar balloting, love trumps respect," he said.

He added, "'The Aviator' is certainly an epic but it is not an epic I guess that America wants to take to its heart. It is a wonderful movie, but at the center of it is a crazy person. Not somebody who people say 'Poor Howard' or 'Brave Howard.' Whereas the Eastwood movie has among the most lovable, take-to-your-heart characters that you can imagine."