It looks like the Academy can’t quit Brokeback Mountain.
It’s hardly been an uphill battle for the acclaimed gay-themed drama, but the film scaled new heights this morning when it garnered eight Academy Award nominations, leading this year’s pack of movies on the path to Oscar glory.
Brokeback Mountain’s octet of nominations included Best Picture, Heath Ledger for Best Actor, Jake Gyllenhaal for Best Supporting Actor, Michelle Williams for Best Supporting Actress and Ang Lee for Best Director, along with nods for cinematography, original score and adapted screenplay. The film has already taken several top honors at various high-profile awards leading into the Academy Awards, including the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild of America.
Also faring well were several of the serious-minded, issued-oriented films that have dominated the headlines and critics’ picks over the past several months, including the Crash and Good Night, and Good Luck, which each received six nominations; Munich and the biopics Capote and Walk the Line, with five nominations apiece; as well as The Constant Gardener, with four. And while the more conventional entertainment Memoirs of a Geisha did not yield any nominations in the major acting, directing or writing slots, it still seduced Oscar voters enough to snare six nods in various other categories.
This year’s contenders for Best Motion Picture of the Year are Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck and Munich.
First-time nominee George Clooney also made history, and not just for his own career. After receiving three nominations–one for Best Director for his sophomore helming effort Good Night, and Good Luck, one for best Original Screenplay for co-writing that film, and one for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the political potboiler Syriana—Clooney became the first directing nominee in the history of the Academy Awards to also receive an acting nomination in a different film than the one he helmed.
On the Scene
The traditional phalanx of journalists, camera crews and publicists that annually descend on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ luxe headquarters in Beverly Hills were–after noshing on bagels and scrambled eggs while studying a photo exhibit of brilliantly candid shots from behind-the-scenes of the 2004 Oscar ceremony–front and center in the plush Samuel Goldwyn Theater as always at 5:38 a.m. as film producer and Academy president Sid Ganis and actress Mira Sorvino, herself an Oscar winner for her supporting turn 1994’s Mighty Aphrodite, took the stage to announce the nominations.
After the announcement, as the TV journalists practiced their snappy on-camera intros–“It was ‘Good Morning and Congratulations’ for Good Night, and Good Luck,” proclaimed Entertainment Tonight’s Mark Stienes–Sorvino, her pregnant frame sheathed in a beautiful black suit, shared her warm feelings for the new crop of nominees, having walked in their shoes before: “It’s thrilling, and that’s why I wanted to congratulate them at the end,” she said, “because it’s a definitely a life-changing thing for people. No matter who wins, it’s such an honor to be nominated and I think they’re all really excited right now, and it was really nice to be the bearer of good news.”
“Of course, I’m always happy to see Woody up there,” Sorvino said, referring to the nomination for Best Original Screenplay for Match Point screenwriter Woody Allen, the filmmaker who previously steered her to Oscar gold. She also had kind words for another actor-writer-director, Clooney. “He’s a quadruple–or quintuple?–threat, he can do everything, and he’s really coming into his own now. I’m very proud of him.”
[PAGEBREAK]Who Scored
This year’s Oscar crop consists of an intriguing mix of respected veteran nominees and a fresh batch of first-timers, admired but sometimes box office-impaired performers and high-profile superstars, as well as a refreshingly distinct lack, in most cases, of the kind of picks the Academy has often been criticized for. For example, the “make-up” nominee honored more superior work from the previous few years they shoulda, woulda, coulda nabbed, the “legacy” nominee that’s honored primarily because they’ve been honored before, and the “they just deserve it” nominee whose nod is more for their body of work than the individual performance of that year.
A prime example of the blending of Oscar’s old hands with well-deserving newbies is in the competition for Best Achievement in Directing, where Munich helmer and two-time winner Steven Spielberg earned his sixth nomination in the category (and 11th overall) and Brokeback Mountain’s Ang Lee received his second (three of his films have also been nominated in foreign film category, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon taking the trophy for Taiwan). They were joined by first-time nominees Good Night, and Good Luck’s Clooney and Capote’s Bennett Miller (each for only their second behind-the-camera efforts), and Paul Haggis, who though making his directorial debut with Crash, was previously Oscar-nominated for his adapted screenplay for last year’s Million Dollar Baby. Lee has to be considered the odd-on favorite going in, having already snared the Golden Globe and DGA honors, but Spielberg is an Academy darling whose talents and reputation may eclipse his film’s hot-potato political issues.
The category of Best Actor, however, was awash with the fresh faces of four first-timers. Brokeback Mountain’s Ledger and Hustle & Flow’s Terrence Howard, are enjoying their breakout years like last year’s winner Jamie Foxx, while Capote’s Philip Seymour Hoffman and Good Night, and Good Luck’s David Strathairn are seasoned actors with long histories of strong performances who may have found their zenith role. Rounding out the category is Walk the Line’s Joaquin Phoenix, previously nominated in the supporting actor field for Gladiator. Hoffman’s taken the pole position going in with prior wins at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards, but Phoenix has a brand-new Globe, too, and just because Ledger didn’t take the SAG trophy, he’s still in the hunt–the actor’s union has proven a very spotty predictor of the ultimate Oscar winner. The fact that Oscar voters are also just now discovering Howard’s performance on their DVD screeners make this one of the most interesting horseraces of recent years.
The Best Actress field offers one of the more intriguing mixes. At a glance, Mrs. Henderson Presents’ Judi Dench, with two previous career nods in the category plus two more–and one win, for Shakespeare In Love–in the supporting actress category, seems like something of a legacy nod, as does North Country’s Charlize Theron, who took home the trophy two years ago for Monster, but their performances in the otherwise imperfect films are certainly nomination-worthy. Walk the Line’s Reese Witherspoon, Transamerica’s Felicity Huffman and Pride & Prejudice’s Keira Knightley each earned their first nominations. Huffman’s TV star status could hamper her Academy appeal (though it didn’t hurt As Good as It Gets’ Helen Hunt) but Industry buzz says Harvey Weinstein is cannily holding back the Transamerica DVDs so it will be the last thing voters see before inking their ballots. Witherspoon, with wins at the Globes, SAGs and others, comes in with the most heat, and the Academy has a recent tradition of awarding beautiful, young, talented actresses with big box office appeal (Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Theron and Hilary Swank) in this category.
The category of Best Supporting Actor provided one of this year’s biggest Oscar surprises, with the unexpected nod to A History of Violence’s William Hurt, a four-time nominee and two-time winner in the lead acting category who, like his colleagues–Syriana’s Clooney, Crash’s Matt Dillon, Cinderella Man’s Paul Giamatti and Brokeback Mountain’s Jake Gyllenhaal–is enjoying his first nomination in this field. Unlike his colleagues, he hasn’t experienced much pre-Oscar hoopla: Giamatti’s collected some early trophies, and the Academy (which failed to nominate Giamatti last year for Sideways) adores the classic kind of Hollywood comeback that positions Dillon well, but the extremely well-liked (and bankable) Clooney, who probably won’t collect on his Good Night, and Good Luck nominations but seems ripe for some kind of Oscar love, may be the real frontrunner here.
The Best Supporting Actress category is another interesting combination of newbies and vets, with the first-time crop of Junebug’s Amy Adams, The Constant Gardener’s Rachel Weisz, and Brokeback Mountain’s Michelle Williams contending with two of Hollywood’s most revered contemporary actresses, Capote’s Catherine Keener (with a previous nom here for Being John Malkovich) and North Country’s Frances McDormand (twice nominated here and a Best Actress winner for Fargo). But Weisz comes in with all of the momentum with big wins at the Globes and SAGs for her revelatory performance–and gains sentimental steam as she’s all aglow with impending motherhood, which couldn’t have hurt then-pregnant Catherine Zeta-Jones when she won in this category for Chicago.
Then there’s the Big One: In the past 20 years, the film with the most nominations has taken home the Best Picture trophy 17 times, which combined with its multitude of previous awards wins in the past several weeks, gives Brokeback Mountain the clear edge, but some are saying the film may have peaked early, having already permeated the pop culture and prompting Academy members to make a fresher choice when they cast their vote, and Crash is slowly gaining ground as the little movie that could–or at least might. Also of note to the trivia-minded: this year marks the first time since 1981 that the Directing and Best Picture nominations dovetail precisely with the same five films.
There wasn’t room among this year’s Oscar contenders for a handful of the favorites who’ve scored in various other awards derbies. Among the overlooked who were considered in contention: director Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener); Russell Crowe and director Ron Howard (Cinderella Man); Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney and director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale); Don Cheadle (Crash); Maria Bello (A History of Violence); Pierce Brosnan (The Matador); Scarlett Johansson (Match Point); Ziyi Zhang and director Rob Marshall (Memoirs of a Geisha); and director Peter Jackson (King Kong).
The Academy did allow for some of 2005’s well-crafted blockbusters and surprise hits to enter the Oscar fray, including The Chronicles of Narnia (makeup, sound mixing and visual effects), King Kong (art direction, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects), Batman Begins (cinematography), Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (makeup) and March of the Penguins (documentary feature).
Finally, whether he takes home a trophy on Oscar night or not, the legendary film score composer John Williams may be on his way to becoming the biggest winner of all when it comes to the Academy Awards. A five-time Oscar winner, Williams was just bestowed with not one but two nominations in the category of Best Original Score for Memoirs of a Geisha and Munich, bringing his all-time total individual nomination tally to 45. Williams’ closest contender in this year’s crop, Woody Allen, with his 21st career nod, looks positively like a whippersnapper in comparison. Not only did it break Williams–responsible for the unforgettable themes of such films as Star Wars, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman, E.T. and Harry Potter to name but a few–out of a tie for the music nominations record with fellow composer Alfred Newman, it also moved the composer two steps closer to the all-time nominations champ, 14 nods away from Walt Disney’s seemingly untouchable total of 59.
The Academy Awards for the outstanding film achievements of 2005 will be presented on Sunday, March 5, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland and televised live on ABC at 5 pm PST / 8 pm EST.
