The cowboy love
story Brokeback Mountain led the Academy Awards
field Tuesday with eight nominations, among them Best
Actor and Best Picture honors for Heath Ledger and director
Ang Lee. Also nominated for Best Picture were the
Truman Capote story Capote; the ensemble drama
Crash; the Edward R. Murrow chronicle Good Night,
and Good Luck; and the assassination thriller Munich.
The Johnny Cash biography, Walk the Line,
considered a likely Best Picture nominee, was shut out,
although Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon earned
acting nominations for the film. Three films were tied
with six nominations each—Crash; Good Night, and
Good Luck; and Memoirs of a Geisha, though
Geisha was shut out in the top categories.
Munich, which had fallen off many awards
analysts' Best Picture picks after a lukewarm reception,
scored well, with five nominations, including Best
Director for Steven Spielberg. King Kong, directed by
Lord of the Rings creator Peter Jackson, earned
only technical nominations, losing out in the major
categories. George Clooney picked up three
nominations: as Supporting Actor for his role as a
steadfast CIA undercover agent in Syriana,
as Best Director and for his part as cowriter in his
Edward R. Murrow tale Good Night, and Good Luck.
Along with Best Actor contender Ledger and
directing nominee Lee, Brokeback Mountain scored
nominations for Jake Gyllenhaal as Supporting Actor,
Michelle Williams as Supporting Actress, and Larry
McMurtry and Diana Ossana for their screenplay adaptation of
Annie Proulx's short story.
The acting categories were a mix of familiar
Oscar faces such as past winners Judi Dench and
Charlize Theron, veterans like Clooney, Witherspoon,
Rachel Weisz, David Strathairn, and Felicity Huffman gaining
their first Academy attention, and young performers such as
Williams and Amy Adams.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, the Best Actor favorite
for his remarkable impersonation of author Truman
Capote in Capote, joined Ledger in the Best Actor
category. Hoffman has triumphed at earlier film
honors, including the Golden Globes. Along with
Hoffman, Ledger, and Phoenix, the other nominees were
Terrence Howard as a small-time hood turned rap singer in
Hustle & Flow and Strathairn as newsman
Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck.
The Best Actress race presumably will shape up
as a two-woman contest between Huffman in a
gender-bending role as a transgender woman about
to undergo a sex change n Transamerica; and
Witherspoon as singer June Carter, Cash's musical
companion and future wife, in Walk the Line. Huffman
won the Golden Globe for Best Dramatic Actress, while
Witherspoon earned the Globe for Best Actress in a
Musical or Comedy. Witherspoon beat Huffman on Sunday for
the Best Actress prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Also nominated for the Best Actress Oscar were
Dench as a society dame who starts a nude stage revue
in 1930s London in Mrs. Henderson Presents; Keira
Knightley as the romantic heroine of the Jane Austen
adaptation Pride & Prejudice; and Charlize Theron
as a mine worker who leads a sexual harassment lawsuit
against male coworkers in North Country.
Brokeback Mountain led a wave of lower-budgeted
independent films that scored big in the nominations,
instead of the studio fare that normally dominates the
Oscars. Other than Munich, most bigger-budget
movies that had been on the Best Picture radar, such
as Walk the Line, Memoirs of a Geisha, and
Cinderella Man, were overlooked in the top
Oscar category.
The year's biggest hit, Star Wars: Episode
III—Revenge of the Sith, earned only one
nomination (for makeup) but was shut out otherwise,
including the Visual Effects category, a blow to
George Lucas and his Industrial Light and Magic outfit,
which has pioneered special effects. The visual
effects nominees were The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion,
The Witch and The Wardrobe; King Kong; and
Spielberg's War of the Worlds.
With key prizes at earlier Hollywood honors
under its belt, Brokeback Mountain heads into the
March 5 awards as the Best Picture front-runner,
potentially the first film with explicit gay themes to
claim the grand prize at the Oscars. The film stars
Ledger and Gyllenhaal as Western roughnecks who share a
summer of love while tending sheep together in the
1960s, then carry on a lifelong romance they conceal
from their families. Williams costars as Ledger's
wife, who overlooks her husband's affair to try to hold her
family together.
Weisz, playing a humanitarian aid worker in
The Constant Gardener, won the Supporting
Actress prize at the Golden Globes and SAG awards,
giving her the inside track for the same honor at the
Oscars. Along with Weisz and Williams, Supporting Actress
nominations went to newcomer Adams as a big-hearted
Southern waif in Junebug; Catherine Keener as To
Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee in
Capote; and Frances McDormand as a miner coping
with debilitating disease in North Country.
Besides Gyllenhaal and Clooney as a bullheaded
CIA agent in Syriana, nominees for Supporting Actor
were Matt Dillon as a racist cop in Crash; Paul
Giamatti as boxer Braddock's manager in Cinderella
Man; and William Hurt as a ruthless mobster in
A History of Violence. Hurt was a bit of
surprise since he only appears for a few minutes at
the end of the film in a scene-stealing role.
Lee, who won the Directors Guild of America
honor Saturday for Brokeback Mountain, is the clear
favorite to win the Best Director Oscar. Brokeback
Mountain has earned top honors from many earlier
Hollywood awards, among them the Golden Globes, the
Directors Guild of America, and key critics groups.
The SAG Awards on Sunday threw up a potential roadblock for
Brokeback Mountain, which was shut out for the
ceremony's five acting awards. Brokeback
Mountain had been viewed as a likely winner of the
guild's award for Overall Cast Performance, a prize
that went to Crash instead. But while the cast award
is the guild's equivalent of a Bes Picture honor, six
of the previous 10 SAG winners failed to take the top
prize on Oscar night, including Sideways last year.
ABC will
broadcast the Oscars live March 5 from Hollywood's Kodak
Theatre, with Jon Stewart as host. (AP)
Here is a
complete list of nominees for the 78th annual Academy
Awards:
Picture:
Brokeback Mountain; Capote; Crash; Good Night,
and Good Luck; Munich
Director: Ang
Lee, Brokeback Mountain; Bennett Miller,
Capote; Paul Haggis, Crash; George Clooney,
Good Night, And Good Luck; Steven Spielberg, Munich
Actor: Philip
Seymour Hoffman, Capote; Terrence Howard,
Hustle & Flow; Heath Ledger,
Brokeback Mountain; Joaquin Phoenix,
Walk the Line; David Strathairn, Good Night,
And Good Luck
Actress: Judi
Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents; Felicity
Huffman, Transamerica; Keira Knightley,
Pride & Prejudice; Charlize Theron,
North Country; Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
Supporting Actor:
George Clooney, Syriana; Matt Dillon,
Crash; Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man; Jake
Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain; William Hurt, A
History of Violence
Supporting
Actress: Amy Adams, Junebug; Catherine Keener,
Capote; Frances McDormand, North
Country; Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener;
Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain
Original
Screenplay: Paul Haggis, Crash; George Clooney
and Grant Heslov, Good Night, And Good Luck;
Woody Allen, Match Point; Noah Baumbach, The
Squid and the Whale; Stephen Gaghan, Syriana
Adapted
Screenplay: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Brokeback
Mountain; Dan Futterman, Capote; Jeffrey Caine,
The Constant Gardener; Josh Olson, A History
of Violence; Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, Munich
Animated Feature:
Howl's Moving Castle, Tim Burton's Corpse
Bride, Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Animated Short:
Badgered, The Moon and the Son: An Imagined
Conversation, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of
Jasper Morello, 9, One Man Band
Art Direction:
Good Night, And Good Luck; Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire; King Kong; Memoirs of a Geisha; Pride
& Prejudice
Cinematography:
Batman Begins; Brokeback Mountain; Good Night,
And Good Luck; Memoirs of a Geisha; The New World
Costume Design:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Memoirs of a
Geisha, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Pride &
Prejudice, Walk the Line
Documentary
Feature: Darwin's Nightmare, Enron: The Smartest
Guys in the Room, March of the Penguins, Murderball,
Street Fight
Documentary
Short: The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the
Bang Bang Club, God Sleeps in Rwanda, The Mushroom Club,
A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin
Film Editing:
Cinderella Man, The Constant Gardener, Crash,
Munich, Walk the Line
Foreign Language
Film: Don't Tell (Italy), Joyeux Noël
(France), Paradise Now (Palestine), Sophie
Scholl—The Final Days (Germany),
Tsotsi (South Africa)
Makeup: The
Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the
Wardrobe; Cinderella Man; Star Wars: Episode
III—Revenge of the Sith
Score:
Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardener,
Memoirs of a Geisha, Munich, Pride & Prejudice
Song: "In the
Deep," Crash; "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp,"
Hustle & Flow; "Travelin' Thru," Transamerica
Live-Action
Short: Ausreisser (The Runaway), Cashback,
The Last Farm, Our Time Is Up, Six Shooter
Sound Editing:
King Kong, Memoirs of a Geisha, War of the Worlds
Sound Mixing:
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch
and the Wardrobe; King Kong; Memoirs of a Geisha; Walk
the Line; War of the Worlds
Visual Effects:
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch
and the Wardrobe; King Kong; War of the Worlds
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