The Academy Award nominations may have been announced in Hollywood, but with a whopping 13 nominations, this morning’s presentation was all about Chicago. The film musical of the same name high-kicked its way into the chorus line of Oscar’s Best Picture front-runners–joined by Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Pianist.
A small army of bleary-eyed West Coast journalists, publicists and TV crew members descended upon the rain-soaked streets of Beverly Hills for the announcement everyone’s been waiting for. Frank Pierson, screenwriter and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and Oscar winner Marisa Tomei (Best Supporting Actress for 1992’s My Cousin Vinny) handled the duties with remarkable verve given the early morning hour.
All That Jazz!
With its baker’s dozen worth of nods, the Jazz Age crowd-pleaser Chicago emerged as the leading candidate to snare the lion’s share of Oscar gold, Along with the big nomination for Best Picture, Broadway choreographer-turned-director Rob Marshall was nominated as Best Director. Renee Zellweger, who plays the starry-eyed murderess Roxie Hart, was tapped as a Best Actress contender, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Queen Latifah both received Best Supporting Actress nods and John C Reilly was among the Best Supporting Actor nominees.
In addition, the film received nods in the categories of Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Directing, Film Editing, Original Song, Sound and Adapted Screenplay. Just one nomination shy of the record 14 shared by 1950’s All About Eve and 1997’s Titanic, the odds are now stacked in Chicago‘s favor for a Best Picture win, as the film with the most nods has won the annual competition 18 times. Based on the hit Broadway musical that was shockingly shut out at the 1976 Tony Awards, the film could conceivably become the first musical to take home a Best Picture trophy since 1968’s Oliver!
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Left Out in the Cold
Speaking of shut outs, one name left out of the Windy City windfall was leading man Richard Gere, who just weeks ago snared a Golden Globe trophy as the best actor in a musical or comedy for his role as a slick 1920s defense lawyer. Gere was edged out of Oscar’s Best Actor category by first-time nominee Adrien Brody for The Pianist, perennial nominee Michael Caine for The Quiet American, and past winners Nicolas Cage for Adaptation, Daniel Day-Lewis for Gangs of New York and Jack Nicholson About Schmidt. Caine has been nominated four times in this category and won a Best Supporting Actor trophy; Cage won for Leaving Las Vegas in 1995; Day-Lewis won for My Left Foot in 1989. Nicholson, who recently won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama, bested his own previously held record and now has 12 Academy Award nominations. Should he win and add a fourth Oscar to his mantle, he will tie Katharine Hepburn as the actor with the most victories.
Also conspicuously absent was much-buzzed about Dennis Quaid for his supporting role in Far From Heaven, and the team of director Sam Mendes and star Tom Hanks for Road to Perdition, both of whom were considered leading Oscar contenders.last summer.
Girls Just Wanna…
But in what some have been calling Hollywood’s “Year of the Woman,” Nicholson‘s nomination tally was bested by the distaff side when Meryl Streep earned her record-shattering 13th nomination as Best Supporting Actress in Adaptation, the previous mark set by–you guessed it–Katharine Hepburn.
Streep might have even snagged a 14th nod for her leading role in The Hours, but she was left out of the Best Actress category in favor of her co-stars Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore (nominated for Far From Heaven), Zellweger and two actresses who were both considered to be vying for the “dark horse” position, Diane Lane (Unfaithful) and Salma Hayek (Frida).
Joining Streep, Zeta-Jones and Latifah in the category of Best Supporting Actress were previous Oscar winner Kathy Bates for About Schmidt and Moore for The Hours. The nomination was Moore‘s second this year–and they’re both for playing 1950s wives caught in bleaker version of life than the standards of the time would accept.
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Support Staff
Among the Best Supporting Actor nominees, Reilly (who besides Chicago also turned in acclaimed performances in The Good Girl, The Hours and Gangs of New York) were Adaptation‘s Chris Cooper, Catch Me If You Can‘s Christopher Walken, Road to Perdition‘s Paul Newman (a previous recipient of an Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement) and The Hours‘ Ed Harris.
Not Such a New Direction
In what is becoming an Academy tradition, the list of nominated directors varied slightly from the list of Best Picture candidates. Chicago‘s Marshall, Gangs of New York‘s Martin Scorsese, The Hours‘ Stephen Daldry and The Pianist‘s Roman Polanski–living in exile in Europe for decades after allegations of having sex with a minor at Nicholson‘s home–made the cut, but LOTR‘s Peter Jackson did not; the fifth slot was filled by Spain’s Pedro Almodovar for Talk to Her, a film that did not qualify as Best Foreign Film because Spain submitted another movie instead.
Stranger Than Fiction
The Academy also chose to nominate a fictional person–a first, having only nominated pseudonyms like P. H. Vazak, the name of Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan screenwriter Robert Towne‘s dog, in the past–when it gave a Best Adapted Screenplay nod to Adaptation‘s credited co-writer Donald Kaufman, the reportedly imaginary twin brother of scribe Charlie Kaufman. Perhaps more bizarrely, Cage is nominated for portraying both Charlie and Donald in the film.
Other oddball Oscar nominees include rapper Eminem, tapped for co-writing 8 Mile‘s “Lose Yourself”; singer-songwriter Paul Simon for The Wild Thornberrys Movie theme song “Father and Daughter” and Frida‘s avant garde director Julie Taymor for penning the lyric to her film’s song “Burn It Blue.” Best known for their raunchy teen sex comedy American Pie, brothers Paul and Chris Weitz now join the big leagues with a shared nomination with screenwriter Peter Hedges for their Adapted Screenplay work on About a Boy.
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Runners Up
Scoring the most nominations after Chicago was Gangs of New York, Scorsese‘s long-planned chronicle of ethnic strife in turn-of-the-century NYC–it garnered ten nominations, including nods for Picture, Actor, Director, Song (U2’s “The Hands That Built America”), Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Sound, and Original Screenplay.
Close behind was The Hours with nine nominations (Picture, Actress, Director, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Costume Design, Directing, Film Editing, Score, and Adapted Screenplay), followed by The Pianist with seven (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing and Adapted Screenplay). While the first film in the J.R.R. Tolkein trilogy garnered some 13 nominations, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers hauled in less than half that many with six mostly technical nods (Best Picture, Art Direction, Film Editing, Sound, Sound Editing and Visual Effects), tying it with Road to Perdition and surprise contender Frida
Less lucky was About Schmidt. The critic’s darling was poised to reel in several possible noms, including for director Alexander Payne and for the screenplay he helped adapt, but in the end only Nicholson and Bates were honored.
Box Office Bucks AND and Oscar Nod?
While the more artful and critically praised films took the lion’s share of the nominations, some very popular fare with big box office numbers also made the cut: Spider-Man received two noms, for Sound and Visual Effects; Star Wars: Episode II–Attack of the Clones was tapped for its Visual Effects; and My Big Fat Greek Wedding‘s Nia Vardalos continued her underdog success story with a nomination for Original Screenplay, apparently sliding through some Oscar loopholes, since she famously adapted the script for her one-woman stage show.
Mighty ‘Max: The Studio Picture
Among the major studios, mighty Miramax reclaimed its briefly flagging status as top dog producer of Oscar-caliber movies, besting its previous record of 24 in 1998 by scoring an outrageous 40 nominations (the most ever since United Artists bagged 45 in 1940) thanks largely to its trifecta of Chicago, Gangs of New York and The Hours, which the Harvey Weinstein-led studio co-produced with Paramount Pictures. Up-and-comer Focus Features, bolstered by the performance of The Pianist, snared 11 nominations; Paramount racked up nine nods, all for The Hours, tying with Twentieth Century Fox; while DreamWorks, New Line and Sony (including its Sony Classics division) each scored eight. Buena Vista (aka Disney, which also owns Miramax) netted four noms, while Universal scored a mere two and Warner Brothers landed an anemic one nomination, which it shared with DreamWorks.
O’Toole Time? Maybe Not This Time
Lastly, there’s still no word on whether multiple nominee Peter O’Toole will show up for the March 23 ceremony hosted by Steve Martin at Hollywood’s Kodak Theater to claim his Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement; O’Toole had asked the Academy to defer the award until his 80th birthday so as not to give the appearance that he’s out of the acting game, but the Academy plans to present the Oscar anyway–whether O’Toole is there to collect it or not.
