Brokeback Mountain lassos three Oscars but
loses big one

The epic gay Western romance Brokeback Mountain took home three major prizes at Sunday night's 78th annual Academy Awards but was stymied in its quest to be named the year's Best Picture. Ang Lee took the Best Director Oscar--making him the first filmmaker of color to do so--while Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana were honored for their adaptation of Annie Proulx's novella. Gustavo Santaolalla was honored with the Best Score prize.

But eight-time nominee Brokeback, considered a front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar, lost to the racism melodrama Crash in a major upset. As critic Kenneth Turan noted in Monday's Los Angeles Times, "For people who were discomfited by Brokeback Mountain but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, Crash provided the perfect safe harbor. They could vote for it in good conscience, vote for it and feel they had made a progressive move, vote for it and not feel that there was any stain on their liberal credentials for shunning what Brokeback had to offer. And that's exactly what they did."

Other winners of queer interest Sunday night were Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won Best Actor for his role as legendary gay author Truman Capote in Capote, and John Canemaker, the gay filmmaker and scholar who took the Best Animated Short Oscar (with Peggy Stern), for The Son and the Moon: An Imagined Conversation. (Advocate.com)