Oscar Climbs the Mountain

Brokeback Leads with Eight Nominations; Munich Surprises with Five

By Sara Michelle Fetters

To no one’s surprise, Brokeback Mountain led all comers this morning with eight Academy Award nominations, including expected nods for Best Picture, Director Ang Lee, Actor Heath Ledger and Supporting Actress Michelle Williams. It is joined in the top category by the Truman Capote biopic Capote, L.A. racial drama Crash, George Clooney’s Edward R. Murrow docudrama Good Night, and Good Luck and, in a bit of a small surprise, Steven Spielberg’s controversial 1970’s revenge thriller Munich.

The film many expected to be the top competitor to Brokeback Mountain, the Johnny Cash biography Walk the Line, had to settle for five nominations in mostly minor categories, save for expected acting nods for both of its leads Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Witherspoon, in most circles, is regarded as the frontrunner for Best Actress, her chief competition coming from Transamerica star Felicity Huffman. This is the first nomination for both highly respected actresses.

Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon - Walk the Line - 20th Century Fox

Other contenders in the category include fellow first-time nominee Keira Knightley as the sprightly literary heroine in Pride & Prejudice, and former winners Judi Dench and Charlize Theron, both actresses shrugging off middling reviews for their respective films Mrs. Henderson Presents and North Country to make the final cut. Absent from the nominations were Academy favorite Joan Allen for her work in The Upside of Anger and Memoirs of a Geisha star Ziyi Zhang.

Philip Seymour Hoffman - Capote - Sony Pictures Classics

Best Actor has been shaping up all season as a battle between Ledger and Capote star Philip Seymour Hoffman and Oscar did not change that dynamic. Joining the duo as nominees are Phoenix, Terrence Howard as a pimp who dreams of music stardom in Hustle & Flow and David Strathairn for his uncanny impersonation of Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck. This is the first nomination for all five contenders, many pundits giving Hoffman the edge based upon his string of wins on the preseason awards circuit.

For Spielberg, Tuesday morning could be seen as validation, at least in the eyes of the motion picture academy, that his risk bringing Munich to the big screen was not in vane. While the film did not score any acting nominations, it did still nab three major notices, including nods for Best Picture, Director and Tony Kushner and Eric Roth’s Adapted Screenplay. It also grabbed nominations for Editing and for John Williams’ score, the composer a double-nominee in the category picking up a nom for Memoirs of a Geisha as well.

All-in-all, other than the strong showing for Munich there were few surprises amongst the nominees. George Clooney was nominated for both his directing (Good Night, and Good Luck) and his acting (Supporting Actor, Syriana), Crash turned its late-season momentum into six nominations (including a Supporting Actor nod for Matt Dillon) and Academy also-ran Paul Giamatti finally got recognized nabbing a nomination for his fine turn in the otherwise ignored boxing melodrama Cinderella Man.

Interesting Oscar tidbits included all five of the Director nominees (Lee, Clooney, Spielberg, Paul Haggis and Bennett Miller) matching up to the five Best Picture nominees, 15 first timers in the acting categories and the virtual shutout of 2005’s most popular box office success Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith which received only one nomination for Best Achievement in Makeup. As for the year’s Best Animated Feature, Disney and Dreamworks’ digital studios found themselves left out in the cold as Oscar went old-school, nominating Hayao Miyazaki’s hand drawn Howl’s Moving Castle and two stop-motion adventures, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

It was Brokeback Mountain, however, that continued to make the most noise emerging as the morning’s clear frontrunner to take home Oscar’s highest honor. The nominations capped an electric two months for Ang Lee’s same-sex Western Romance, a period that saw it sweep up awards from critics groups across the country and outdraw many of Hollywood’s highest profile features on a per-screen basis.

A complete list of nominees can be found at http://www.oscars.org/78academyawards/noms.html. The 78th Annual Academy Awards will be televised Sunday, March 5 on ABC. Remember to check out MovieFreak’s third annual Academy Awards Preview on Friday, February 27 where Dennis and I will once again battle it out to see who knows Oscar best.

Article Posted: 01.31.06