OSCAR NOMINATIONS 2005

THE OFFICIAL LIST FROM OSCAR.COM:

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
78th Annual Academy Awards Nominations
PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Philip Seymour Hoffman - CAPOTE
Terrence Howard - HUSTLE & FLOW
Heath Ledger - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Joaquin Phoenix - WALK THE LINE
David Strathairn - GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
George Clooney - SYRIANA
Matt Dillon - CRASH
Paul Giamatti - CINDERELLA MAN
Jake Gyllenhaal - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
William Hurt - A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Judi Dench - MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS
Felicity Huffman - TRANSAMERICA
Keira Knightley - PRIDE & PREJUDICE
Charlize Theron - NORTH COUNTRY
Reese Witherspoon - WALK THE LINE

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Amy Adams - JUNEBUG
Catherine Keener - CAPOTE
Frances McDormand - NORTH COUNTRY
Rachel Weisz - THE CONSTANT GARDENER
Michelle Williams - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM OF THE YEAR
HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE
TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE
WALLACE & GROMIT IN THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT

ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTION
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
KING KONG
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
PRIDE & PREJUDICE

ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY
BATMAN BEGINS
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
THE NEW WORLD

ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTSPRIDE & PREJUDICE
WALK THE LINE

ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
CAPOTE
CRASH
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.
MUNICH

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE
ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS
MURDERBALL
STREET FIGHT

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
THE DEATH OF KEVIN CARTER: CASUALTY OF THE BANG BANG CLUB
GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA
THE MUSHROOM CLUB
A NOTE OF TRIUMPH: THE GOLDEN AGE OF NORMAN CORWIN

ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING
CINDERELLA MAN
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
CRASH
MUNICH
WALK THE LINE

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR
DON'T TELL
JOYEUX NOèL
PARADISE NOW
SOPHIE SCHOLL - THE FINAL DAYS
TSOTSI

ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
CINDERELLA MAN
STAR WARS: EPISODE III REVENGE OF THE SITH

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES
(ORIGINAL SCORE)
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
MUNICH
PRIDE & PREJUDICE

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES
(ORIGINAL SONG)
"In the Deep" - CRASH
"It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" - HUSTLE & FLOW
"Travelin' Thru" - TRANSAMERICA

BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
CAPOTE
CRASH
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.
MUNICH

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
BADGERED
THE MOON AND THE SON: AN IMAGINED CONVERSATION
THE MYSTERIOUS GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORATIONS OF JASPER MORELLO
9
ONE MAN BAND

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
AUSREISSER (THE RUNAWAY)
CASHBACK
THE LAST FARM
OUR TIME IS UP
SIX SHOOTER

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING
KING KONG
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
WAR OF THE WORLDS

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
KING KONG
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
WALK THE LINE
WAR OF THE WORLDS

ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
KING KONG
WAR OF THE WORLDS

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
CAPOTE
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
MUNICH

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
CRASH
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.
MATCH POINT
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE
SYRIANA

actor - hoffman
actress - huffman
supporting actor - gyllenhaal or clooney
supporting actress - francis Mc
director - brokeback
art direction - geisha
animation - timmy b
cinematography - brokeback
picture - capote
screenplay - crash

Clooney will probably get supporting actor.

BBM will get shut out of all the acting awards but will win Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay.

And Reese has got it. But man, wouldn't Keira Knightly give an awesomely surprised and flabber-fucking-gasted acceptance speech? That would be an awesome Oscar moment. Prolly ain't gonna happen, but still.

And yes, BBM should win Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay.

Well, by that logic Titanic was an ICEBERG MOVIE

But it won because ITS HEART was about ETERNAL LOVE between TEENAGERS, not a woman and a big ape. Oh, and cuz it made a billion dollars.

Kind of cool that Malick's DP Lubezki got one, he didn't get a guild nom. He'll lose to either the pretty gay mountains or the b&w CBS newsroom.

But yeah, in general a fucking boring list as usual.

pic - bareback
actor - heath
actress - reese
sup actor - giamatti
sup actress - catherine keener
director - clooney
orig screenplay - crash
adap screenplay - brokeback
animated flic - wallace and gromit
art direction - kong
cinematography - brokeback

dench's nod has as much to do with the weinsteins as her

By the Academy? middle-aged to elderly Jack Lemmon.

Anyone have the list of number of nominations per film?

emma thompson. really both of them need to stay in their period piece holes so the rest of us dont have to look at them.

hope crash wins the screenplay

Clooney will win Supp Actor partly as a semi-consolation prize for losing to Ang Lee, the way Jessica Lange won for Tootsie the year she was also up for Frances.

I really believe if the Best Picture nominees had been announced on New Years Day, Walk the Line would've squeezed out Munich. The political wingnut attacks on Spielberg led them to circle the wagons.

Ledger is the more tortured of the two characters; he ducks his head and twitches a lot. He does it quite well, and the film is ultimately (literally) about him rather than JG's character.

Dude, he came from this:

http://www.markheadrick.com/dvd/images/AKnightsTale.jpg

I'm more fond of Gyllie's performance, in part because the doe-eyed ardor which annoyed the piss out of me in earlier movies finally works in BBM.

Could there ever be an actor/actress that is more overrated?
By the Academy? middle-aged to elderly Jack Lemmon.

Meryl Streep is a better analogy. She got/gets nominated for sneezing.

Should an actor be rewarded for just being himself, if being himself happens to fit really well with the role he was cast in? It seems like that award should go to the casting director, not the actor.

q'orianka kilcher was totally robbed. esp. in a year like this of not particularly spectacular roles for women there's no reason she shouldn't be up there. she was ROBBED!

and munich was TOTALLY ROBBED for art direction & cinematography. batman begins?!?!

At this rate Amy Adams and Michelle Williams better pray they DON'T get the trophy

I'm talking about the "doe-eyed ardor" that didn't fit in previous roles, but works well in BBM, according to your earlier post.

Giamatti is a total make-up for his Sideways passover.

I can't think of a Streep nom that wasn't for a decent performance, tho I'm more fond of the Cry in the Dark / Ironweed era.

Thank God for big pimpin', or we'd have 20 lilywhite actors again.

Tally:
Brokeback Mountain-8 noms
Crash-6 noms
Good Night and Good Luck-6 noms
Capote-5 noms
Munich-5 noms
Walk the Line-5 noms
Memoirs of a Geisha-5 noms
King Kong-4 noms
Pride and Prejudice-4 noms
Constant Gardener-4 noms

Alfred generally otm re range ... two Golden Agers like Bogart and Cary Grant had a recognizable star persona, yet got the most 'acclaim' when they stepped outside it (quite erroneously, I think).

yay!

But is having a persona the same thing as being a good actor? Clint Eastwood has a persona - he may be a great icon, but is he technically a great actor? Perhaps the Academy and the SAG and others are not wrong when they tend to reward actors who play against type or take on roles that require them to play someone different from themselves. I mean perhaps we should distinguish between what an actor does and who they are. Do we reward them for having the right look for a role, or for their performance, you know, what they actually do? Because the first one, to me, seems like more the casting director's job.

but anyway, back to the Oscars...

anyone seen North Country? Looks like another one of those washerwoman epics like Country and Norma Rae that the Academy loves because it's about The Little People.

Alfred, have you ever seen None but the Lonely Heart, where Grant plays a Cockney? It's apparently the closest he came to winning an Oscar cuz it was 'serious.'

Everything Jack Nicholson has done in the last fifteen years to thread.

AMERICAN actors, that is. If you listen to the BBM boys discuss the ways in which they 'created' their characters, you'd think they'd gone to dentist school or were mowing a lawn. One of the more revelatory experiences re film acting I've had in recent years occurred when I read one of Alec Guinness' superb memoirs. He dismissed American snifflng about the Method as rubbish and chuckled at the thought of actors "taking their characters home.'

Maybe it's our Puritan roots. Acting is seen as frivolous, so we have to reassure Katie Couric that it's really hard work.

Everything Jack Nicholson has done in the last fifteen years to thread.

You're forgetting about the Sean Penn films (liked The Pledge -- study those titles, blunty -- not The Crossing Guard) and his 2 neat-o comic vamps in Mars Attacks!

Ang Lee gets it cuz of accumulated brownie points from Flying Wires, ie the Academy's My Very First Modern Martial Arts Movie.

There's also the famous story about Laurence Olivier and the Method-mad Dustin Hoffman on set of The Marathon Man: "You should try acting, my boy. It's so much easier."

Eric H & Ed G of Slant: 26/30
Alfred: 25/30
me: 25/30

I forgot to post the screenplays, for which I got all ten -- as did just about every forecast I saw.

Clint Eastwood is a "dilettante"?

blount, why snub Ang Lee when they can give Clooney supp actor, as that's how it's gone down at the other pageants? Plus GC will be directing lots more, maybe yet another TV bio (Oprah as herself?).

P Kael said Eastwood wasn't a bad actor, he'd have to start acting first. She was kind of annoying.

Clooney too well-liked to lose, Jake too raw and cute to win.

this is the second time maria bello got hot oscar talk for a hot sex scene and it didn't pan out.

Good Night and Good Luck ought to win cinematography, I can't think of a B&W film that has looked that good in fifty years. Oh the joys of color stock and digital post.

David Carr in NYT:

"“Kong” has grossed over $213 million, while the five nominees together don’t top $185 million, even lower than last year’s $204 million as a group at nomination time."

What I don't understand is why they aren't both nominated for best leading role. If this was a heterosexual couple you'd have both the male and the female in the leading nominations, like Joaquin and Reese. I think Jake is just as good and important in the film as Heath.

Sexual politics have got nothing to do with it. It's Oscar politics.

cuz Jake's the bottom (someone musta beat me to that).... it was clear early on that if anyone was gonna win the lead trophy it was HL.

Actor: Hoffman
Sup actor: Clooney
Actress: Witherspoon
Sup actress: Keener
Director: Ang Lee
Original screenplay: Goodnight & etc.
Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback
Picture: Brokeback

If the Academy won't give Clooney the supporting actor trophy, he'll win original screenplay; in that case Gyllie The Bottom or Giamatti will win.

http://goldderby.latimes.com/awards_goldderby/2006/01/expect_big_upse.html

Best line: "Jake Gyllenhaal 's role may be too passive."

Let's see how medieval Altman gets on Dubya's ass in his speech.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1154754,00.html

We all know that in addition to parceling out the highest honors in American filmmaking, the Oscars tend to generate big chunks of cash. The so-called “Oscar bump” can be good for $5 million or $10 million, or even more, a windfall of cash at the box office that rewards those who made good films and ran good campaigns behind them. But the Bagger has been spending some quality time on Box Office Mojo and, more worrisome, with his own calculator. And what he’s found is that this year, there will be no Oscar bump - far from it. The tale of the box office tape suggests that the Oscar sparkle will do little for the long-term business outlook of this year’s best picture nominees. True enough, the four still in theatrical release – “Brokeback Mountain,” “Munich,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and “Capote” — got a bit of a push the week after nominations were announced. They went from a collective weekend gross of $8.9 million before the announcements to $11.5 million the weekend after. But then they went right off the cliff. Last weekend, the carnage was everywhere. The four films (”Crash” came out earlier in the year and is only on DVD) were down a collective 43.4 percent from the previous weekend and took in just about $6.9 million. In other words, they were worse off than before the Oscars. “Brokeback” is still in almost 2,000 theaters and took in a robust $4 million, but “Munich” lost 600 screens, better than half its theaters, and took in a miserable $783,510. Given the level of heat and promotion behind the movie, it is clear that not many besides Academy members are taking Steven Spielberg up on his suggestion that people ignore the partisans and see the movie for themselves. “Capote,” which recently crept over the $20 million mark, took in $1.27 million while “Good Night, and Good Luck,” did $872,000. Pretty small beer for what are supposed to be the most lauded films of 2005.

So what have we learned? That the small movies that the Academy has settled on as the best of the best are going to stay tiny. The five nominees at this time last year did about $27.2 million in business two weeks after they were picked – nearly four times as much as the nominees this year. It raises the issue of how much money the backers of these films will put behind them – the assumptio is that Oscar marketing helps at the box office while it beats the drums for statues, and that any eventual wins at the Oscars will then further accrue at the box office. But maybe not this year.

“Everybody knocks the studios and the kind of movies that they have put out – and they didn’t have a good year, it’s true – but if you watch what has happened since, its not like these kind of movies are going to be good for the business, either,” said one executive involved in the Oscar race this year. “The box office for the nominees so far has been a joke.”

(Btw, seeing as the movies this year refuse to come up large, the Bagger thinks that not just the Academy, but more specifically ABC and its advertisers, must be a little hinky about what is going to happen to ratings this year. Come to think of it, Academy honcho Sid Ganis and Co. might know exactly what they are doing by booking Jon Stewart as host. If this indeed is going to be a transitional year for the Oscars, why not use Stewart and a legion of new one-names like Heath, Jake, Reese and Terrence to pull in a younger demo and perhaps create some new sizzle?)

Reading Slant's one-a-day predictions (and bravo, Eric & Co, all the Haggis-bashing is hilarious), I realize it's inevitable that Crash is winning three. More opportunities to make enemies at the party!

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/features/2006oscarrace.asp

The comparisons don't end in the sack: Brokeback Mountain and Munich both share a narrative structure, beginning with a surprisingly satisfying initial transgression followed by an increasingly fragmented progression of frustrated interludes and thwarted catharses. Munich winds up on a veritable orgasm and afterglows in cognitive dissonance. Brokeback Mountain's coda opts for the much easier-to-swallow taste of bittersweet regret, the political implications no more difficult to parse than a hypothetical Choose Your Own Adventure book written by Paul Haggis.

The Crash diss at the end, right on and keep it comin'. The similarities b/w the storylines of BBM and Munich is shrewd if banal. But BBM couldn't develop as anything but "an increasingly fragmented progression of frustrated interludes," while it's Munich that wallows in bittersweet regret (Eric Bana unable to return to the doe-eyed security guy on Golda Meir's detail and the unmitigated bliss of sticking his wife in the ass).

I would also assume, given the box office trends of late, that the biggest Oscar bump would come in DVD sales and rentals. Tired, middle-aged Middle Americans probably aren't going to trek to wherever to watch Munich, but if it wins an Oscar, they'll certainly think about ponying up $20 at Best Buy.

But it does have a pretty-boy protagonist whose rather abrupt development of a conscience is banal; or, rather, is banalized by Roth-Kushner-Spielberg's inability to accept the nihilism of their assasins (these are, after all, NICE assassins who don't kill little girls).

Crash notwithstanding, this is actually a respectable group of Best Pic nominees. Whatever their flaws, Capote, Brokeback Mountain and Munich are hardly in the league of Finding Neverland or Million Dollar Baby. Even the director of Good Night, Good Luck has the good sense to palliate his script's liberal pieties by keeping the running time to a trim 80 minutes.

Ohhhh... maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! (tho I feel confident I will never see Finding Neverland.)

That shameless tearjerking and hillbilly-bashing in the last third of M$ Baby makes more sense now given Haggis' involvement.

(xpost)

Munich is beyond brow for me. They managed to nominate both the best and worst American film of last year.

I don't know about Ang Lee vs Eastwood. I haven't seen Eat Drink Man Woman, but on the evidence of The Wedding Banquet* (which I saw for the first time last week and was quite impressed; Lee's really good directing old people! almost Ozu-esque!) he's got as many good/great films as Eastwood, who in a career littered with average-and-worse pictures has made two good-to-great ones: Unforgiven and Sophocles by the Mystic River.

*In its low-key way The Wedding Banquet is a more transgressive film than Brokeback Mountain: the parents are cool with the menage-a-trois raising the baby!

My favorite film by him is easily Eat Drink Man Woman.
By Eastwood, White Hunter Black Heart.

Don't believe those clueless "experts" who harrumph and dismiss this Academy Awards race as the most obvious and predictable ever. If the current kudos calendar had been in place four years ago, those same chowderheads who now say — with convincing haughtiness — that Reese Witherspoon can't lose best actress for "Walk the Line" probably would've insisted that Sissy Spacek couldn't lose for "In the Bedroom" for the same reason: both actresses swept the early kudos in January, after all, didn't they? Therefore, the experts proclaim — sounding utterly reasonable — that the Oscar is, inevitably, next.

Thirty-two years ago they would've claimed that divine intervention couldn't possibly stop "The Exorcist" from winning best picture. After all, it had won the Golden Globe and proved to be the financial film of the year by reaping the most box-office gold. Three of its Oscar rivals hadn't even been nominated for best drama picture at the Globes. The fifth nominee, "A Touch of Class," had won the Globe for best comedy/musical picture, sure, but it was considered featherweight froth without a chance of exorcising Hollywood's blockbuster devil from the category.

Oscar "experts" tend to be only as good as their crystal balls and this year they don't have the same ones that saved them from making fools of themselves earlier. Four years ago a Screen Actors Guild Award revealed a late-breaking surge in the lead actress race by Halle Berry ("Monster's Ball"), who'd previously lost the Globe and all critics' awards. Thirty-two years ago "The Sting" won its first big Hollywood prize very late in the race, too, when it was hailed by the Directors Guild of America in the Oscars' home stretch.

If those guild awards hadn't tattled on Berry and "The Sting," the vast majority of self-proclaimed experts never would've seen those wins coming.

This year the Oscars are unique because we don't have those guild awards positioned at the tail end of the race to give us a gauge of late-breaking industry views. The actors' and directors' guild kudos were bestowed back in January, pushed forward on the calendar so they could stay out in front of the Oscars, which moved up their ceremony date from late March/early April two years ago. The previous two Oscars were held in late February, but now they're occurring in early March so they don't have to compete against the winter Olympics. In between the January awards and the March Oscars this year is a long period of eerie quiet when many key races could've shifted without us knowing.

What the producers', actors' and directors' guilds revealed in January was what we already knew: that "Brokeback," Lee, Hoffman and Witherspoon were ahead. OK, fine, but what about now, eh?

Personally, I decided to be conservative and bet on only one major upset. Here's how I decided which one.

I believe Ang Lee, Philip Seymour Hoffman and George Clooney will win because they all have something in common with many past champs: it's their year and they're nominated for career-defining work.

Upsets are possible for best picture, actress and supporting actress. I don't have the guts to call "Crash" over "Brokeback," so scratch that. That leaves actress and supporting actress.

Remember the blog item I posted a few weeks ago about those scientists up at the University of Oregon who use a new stats system to predict the Oscars? When applied retroactively, it claims an accuracy rate of 81% in the top four races (picture, director, actor, actress) since 1975. This year the system forecasts wins for "Brokeback," Lee, Hoffman and Witherspoon. Fine, but its past performance suggests that one of those four will be wrong. It gives the least favorable odds to Witherspoon.

OK, so there I have permission to vote against Witherspoon, if I so wish. And I do because I believe The Last Movie Seen Theory, which gives the edge to Felicity Huffman considering that sneaky, Oscar-grabbing studio chief Harvey Weinstein sent "Transamerica" screeners last to most Oscar voters.

Also, I'm employing a little common sense here. Just look at the two performances. Reese is sweet, perky and just AOK in a supporting role that's old news. Felicity dominates her own film, giving a sledgehammer performance that leaves academy members smarting during these recent weeks since they finally caught up with that amazing film. Granted, it's rare that women over age 40 win, but they pull it off when they're considered to be cool like Susan Sarandon ("Dead Man Walking") — and perhaps TV's red-hot Desperate Housewife who recently pulled off a jaw-dropping upset at the Emmys.

No one could've foreseen "Midnight Cowboy's" dark-horse dash toward the Oscar finish line if it hadn't won the Directors Guild of America Award in the last few weeks of the 1969 derby. Previously, it had not been hailed as best picture by Golden Globe voters or film critics.

Also, I really don't understand basing your predictions on some intuition that there will be one or more upsets. It's true, there usually are, but it seems a fool's errand to try to predict where it's going to happen: that's why they're called upsets. It seems a lot safer to me to just predict the front-runners and maybe miss out on a category or two than to kick yourself for being daring when the predictable choice wins.

The Sting (1973)
Rocky (1976)
Chariots of Fire (1981)
Out of Africa (1985)
Platoon (1986)
The Last Emperor (1987)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Schindler's List (1993)
Braveheart (1995)
Titanic (1997)
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)

Does Diane Keaton count as a movie star and Frances McDormand as a non-movie star in 1996?

If not, then probably Kathy Bates over Meryl Streep in 1990. (Bates hadn't really done anything prior to Misery.)

Clooney seems as close to a lock as Witherspoon; he didn't have his schmoozy Hollywood cachet working for him at the BAFTAs. He's cool, beloved for his Articulate Liberal Star thing, and got fat for the part. Game over. (And I haven't seen Syriana either.)

All that makes me doubt this is his screenplay nod. Maybe Crash will lose this award and Dillon or Gyllenhaal will get the supporting actor award.

i'm pretty sure michelle pfeiffer lost to someone of significantly less wattage a little after that though

Jessica Tandy for Driving Ms Daisy.

Pfeiffer lost in 1989 to Jessica Tandy.

The Oscars have earned extra hatred since they started regularly honoring not watchable middlebrow bores, but insults to anyone's intelligence on the scale of Life is Beautiful and Shakespeare in Love. And all those Russell Crowe films I haven't seen.

There's been many, many insults to the intelligence over the years.

The Best Pic embarrassments have been much steadier of late, and c'mon, Ben-Hur is a fun movie if only for the chariot race, Stephen Boyd's Vidal-inspired sexual predatorism, and inspiring the SCTV version.

(not seen Calvacade, Greatest Show, Forrest Gump, Braveheart)

I haven't seen Reese a whole lot, but so far I've judged her a likable star who can act the SAME way each time (incl The Man in the Moon).

I haven't seen Reese a whole lot, but so far I've judged her a likable star who can act the SAME way each time (incl The Man in the Moon).

That's why she's a star!

Jennifer Lopez
George Clooney
Reese Witherspoon
Lily Tomlin
Naomi Watts
Charlize Theron
Uma Thurman
Chris "Ludacris" Bridges
Nicole Kidman
Steve Carell
Will Smith
Terrence Howard
Meryl Streep
Clint Eastwood
Queen Latifah
Will Ferrell
Luke Wilson
Sandra Bullock
Tom Hanks
Jennifer Aniston
Luke Wilson
Owen Wilson
Jessica Alba
Morgan Freeman
Hilary Swank
Jamie Foxx

this story comes out before the ballots are in and it closes the sale for her - http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20060301-9999-1n1michelle.html

Oh, "Rachael Leigh Cook" ... that clears up everything.

If You've Got It, Do You Flaunt It?
By CARRIE FISHER

WINNING an Academy Award is obviously a high point for most people, but what happens next? What happens after this particular happily ever after? Once you're home from the afterparties and it's just you and your little golden man, staring each other down in the front hall on Monday morning, where's he going to go? The two of you will be living together for a long time, and — regardless of the fact that he's never going to smile, no matter where you put him — you need to come to some sort of arrangement.

Are you going to be one of those people who put their statuettes in some really obvious place, like on the living room mantle? Or perhaps you'll sheepishly tuck it away in some dusty corner of a library bookshelf. Or you could make light of it by displaying it in the "loo," say, as Emma Thompson says she does — though sadly even this can smack of a certain smug self-effacement.

What's the new award winner to do?

Not having faced this high-class problem myself, I called around to a few people who have, trying to glean the secret codes of Oscar placement in hope of offering some helpful hints to this year's winners. As it turns out, there are simply no hard and fast rules.

What you do with your Oscar, and where it goes in your house, seem to depend largely on where you are in your life. For someone who cares for little else besides career, for example, it's the ideal accessory, often treated with a respect verging on worship. When Frank Sinatra won for Best Supporting Actor in "From Here to Eternity" in 1954, he was, well, extremely focused on his work and his standing in Hollywood. The story I heard was that when he first received it, he was very protective of it. But years later, a friend of mine heard that he had become much more cavalier, to the point of occasionally using it as a doorstop.

For women, winning an Oscar can sometimes be more complicated. My friends and I used to make bets about how long a celebrity marriage would last after the woman had won an Oscar and the man hadn't. Regardless of how big the man's box office was, once the woman received the statuette, it seemed that the days of the marriage were numbered. For some men, at least, a woman flaunting an Oscar can feel like deliberate emasculation, and spell doom for the relationship.

Even men with no connection to the movie industry can make their wives think twice about showing off their statuettes. When Jane Fonda won her first Best Actress Oscar, for "Klute" in 1972, she was single, and happily displayed the statuette on a bookcase. But when she married Tom Hayden a year later, she told me, "I put it away; it felt too prideful." What decent radical, after all, would showcase a golden statuette at home while protesting the war on the street? It didn't fit the Jane Fonda of that era.

But I think this reticence says as much about the husband as it does the wife, or the times: In 1991, she married Ted Turner, who had a huge display case to house all of his awards. Jane promptly had one of her own made, and her Oscars remain there to this day.

Jennifer Jones, who won the award for Best Actress for "The Song of Bernadette" in 1944, may be the ultimate example of a woman for whom the Oscar was truly no big deal, in her life or her house. Her marriage to the actor Robert Walker was falling apart at the time — she filed for divorce the day after the awards ceremony — and she was deeply in love with David O. Selznick, the producer of "Bernadette," whom she would later marry.

In the midst of all this, "the Oscar was never really a focal point," said her son Robert Walker Jr., who was putting it mildly.

The night she won, she left the statuette on the back seat of the taxi that drove her home. It was returned to her, and spent several decades on a towel shelf in a bathroom (a fact she told no one, not even the nosiest of reporters). Then, a few years ago, she gave it to her hairdresser, Elle Elliott. (Jennifer is a very generous person; I imagine there are many people in her life that she would like to give Oscars to.) Ms. Elliott returned it days later, realizing that Jennifer's children would object to the transfer, and it now resides in a sitting room in the Malibu house that Jennifer shares with Robert, his wife Dawn and their children.

Jennifer, who turns 87 today, is selectively hazy about certain details of her past, but she has little difficulty remembering significant relationships or moments in her career, including "The Song of Bernadette." Her Oscar, though, is another matter: "Oh, there it is," she said on the phone, as someone in her house held up the statuette. "I must've won one then. I don't remember it, though."

While in Santa Fe last weekend, I called Shirley MacLaine and we spent a whole day together talking, but barely touched on the reason I had called, the whereabouts of her Oscar. (I did manage to find out that it's somewhere at her ranch, maybe in the library.) But this woman has so many other interests it would be hard to say where or if that Oscar fits into her life at all.

Elizabeth Taylor, on the other hand, has never forgotten her Oscars, although there are quite a lot of them to forget. All three are prominently displayed in her dining room along with her late husband Mike Todd's Oscar for "Around the World in 80 Days," a photograph of her investiture by the Queen as a dame of the Order of the British Empire, equivalent to knighthood, and a certificate commemorating the event. And, as far as I know, she has never for a moment felt the need to hide them. The first, for "Butterfield 8" in 1961, had no apparent effect on her marriage to my father, Eddie Fisher, which was doomed anyway (it lasted another three years). And I truly doubt whether her Oscars were a factor in the success and failure and success and failure of her marriages to Richard Burton — even the one she won for her role opposite him in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Richard was also nominated, but unfortunately did not win.

"Elizabeth was furious that Richard didn't win," said Mike Nichols, who directed the couple in "Woolf" and won the Oscar the next year for "The Graduate" (he keeps it in his office next to the fax machine). "It made her completely unable to enjoy winning herself."

Well, she may not have enjoyed the victory, but she seems to have grown comfortable with the Oscar over time. The awards shelf is clearly a center of power in her home. But knowing her as I do, it seems to me that the awards are like jewelry to her: treasures bestowed on her in return for the ardent pursuit of her passions. As her jewelry adorns her person and brings out her eyes, the Oscars adorn her home. They bring out her windows.

My pal Bruce Cohen, a producer, may have come up with my favorite answer to the problem of what to do with your Oscar. He keeps his, for Best Picture for "American Beauty," in his bedroom next to a fake Fabergé egg, a tiny glass vase with tiny fake roses and a miniature rhinestone-covered piano I bought for him from the Liberace Museum, topped with its own little candelabra.

It makes the Oscar look a little bit as though it too comes from the Liberace Museum, and a little bit Ken and Barbie. It puts me in mind of a great accessories idea, for those over-the-top gift bags they give out at the awards: For the Oscar winner who has everything, a little something for Oscar himself. A little Oscar mink for the Best Actress Oscar winner, a tiny Oscar necklace, on permanent loan from Neil Lane, and an Oscar limo, waiting for Oscar to finish his night of being photographed at all the best parties.

Bruce's little setup is certainly self-conscious, but it doesn't feel smugly self-effacing or obvious or like he's trying too hard. For those who don't want to forget their awards, but are afraid of seeming "prideful," his may be the best example to follow.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company