Brokeback Mountain, Capote big winners with L.A. film
critics

The 2005 film awards season had its official kickoff Saturday with the announcement of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards, and gay-themed films took several top prizes. The acclaimed tragic Western romance Brokeback Mountain was named Best Picture, with Ang Lee picking up the Best Director prize. Bennett Miller's Capote, about gay author Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood, won Best Actor for Philip Seymour Hoffman and Best Screenplay for Dan Futterman (in a tie with Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale). Capote's Catherine Keener was named Best Supporting Actress for her body of work in 2005, which also included The Ballad of Jack and Rose, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and The Interpreter.

Other LAFCA winners included Vera Farmiga, who took Best Actress for the little-seen but acclaimed indie Down to the Bone; William Hurt for Best Supporting Actor in A History of Violence; Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Best Animated Feature; 2046, Best Production Design; Good Night, and Good Luck, Best Cinematography; Howl's Moving Castle, Best Score; Cache, Best Foreign Film; Grizzly Man, Best Documentary/Non-Fiction Film; Terence Howard, New Generation; Richard Widmark, Career Achievement; La Commune (Paris, 1871), Best Independent/Experimental Film; and special citations to openly gay Los Angeles Times film critic Kevin Thomas and to David Shepard, Bruce Posner, and the Anthology Film Archive for the Unseen Cinema DVD set.

In other Brokeback Mountain news, the Heath Ledger-Jake Gyllenhaal hit was cited as one of the year's best films by the American Film Institute. The film is also a nominee for Best Picture at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Critics' Choice Awards. (Advocate.com)