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

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