Once again this year, the voters of the Motion Picture Academy will prove something important: What seems business as usual in Hollywood — the manufacture of big-budget extravaganzas — isn’t what the people who work there tend to most applaud or value. If everything goes according to the clues, the slate of nominees for best picture and other major categories will include not the blockbusters the major studios spend most of their time and effort making and promoting, but more of the less-expensive, more lovingly crafted pictures that come mostly from the subsidiaries and smaller companies.
In this case, the four likeliest best picture nominees were released by Focus Features (“Brokeback Mountain”), UA/Sony Pictures Classics (“Capote”), Lionsgate (“Crash”) and Warner Independent Pictures (“Good Night, and Good Luck.”).
That’s what often happens with the Oscars. If there are new wrinkles in 2006, they come from trends toward real-life stories and gay themes. The Academy may well bestow its three top 2006 awards on a movie about a gay love affair between two cowboys (“Brokeback Mountain”), and two lead performances that portray, respectively, a famous real-life gay journalist-novelist (Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Capote”) and a pre-op transsexual man on the verge of becoming a woman (actress Felicity Huffman in “Transamerica”).
Indeed, “Brokeback Mountain” and Hoffman are such prohibitive favorites right now, it’ll be an upset if they don’t win on Oscar night. And though the trend isn’t new — sympathetic gay characters are a show business norm these days. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that “Brokeback” and “Capote” are such good movies and surprise hits. Financial success never hurt anyone’s Oscar chances, especially if it comes to a movie that also seems a labor of love.
Below are my picks of the possible nominees in seven categories.
Picture
“Brokeback Mountain”
“Capote”
“Crash”
“Good Night, and Good Luck.”
“Walk the Line”
Four of the likely best picture nominees — “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Capote” and “Crash” — dominated the nominations in the major guild contests, an indicator of heavy voter support. The fifth slot seems a tossup between the much-admired but to me overrated Johnny Cash bio and Spielberg’s controversial political thriller, “Munich.” (Sixth pick: “Munich.”)
Actor
Russell Crowe (“Cinderella Man”)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (“Capote”)
Heath Ledger (“Brokeback Mountain”)
Joaquin Phoenix (“Walk the Line”)
David Strathairn (“Good Night, and Good Luck.”)
Hoffman’s lisping, powerful tour de force as Truman Capote, an instant classic of a performance, seems so far ahead of the field, and most of the other nominations seem so obvious, that the main question may be whether “Hustle and Flow’s” Terrence Howard can nudge out Russell Crowe. (Sixth pick: Terrence Howard in “Hustle and Flow.”)
Actress
Judi Dench (“Mrs. Henderson Presents”)
Felicity Huffman (“Transamerica”)
Charlize Theron (“North Country”)
Reese Witherspoon (“Walk the Line”)
Ziyi Zhang (“Memoirs of a Geisha”)
This list repeats the five Screen Actors’ Guild nominations, but though four of them seem solid, Ziyi Zhang is very vulnerable to a Keira Knightley assault. (Sixth pick: Knightley in “Pride and Prejudice.”)
Supporting actor
George Clooney (“Syriana”)
Matt Dillon (“Crash”)
Paul Giamatti (“Cinderella Man”)
Jake Gyllenhaal (“Brokeback Mountain”)
Terrence Howard (“Crash”)
Three guys from the crackerjack “Crash” ensemble — Dillon, Howard and Don Cheadle — are all strong candidates in a very strong field; only two are likely to make it. (Sixth pick: Bob Hoskins in “Mrs. Henderson Presents.”)
Supporting Actress
Amy Adams (“Junebug”)
Maria Bello (“A History of Violence”)
Catherine Keener (“Capote”)
Rachel Weisz (“The Constant Gardener”)
Michelle Williams (“Brokeback Mountain”)
The offbeat pick here, Amy Adams as the luminously good wife of the low-budget “Junebug,” seems to me easily the best of the bunch, though that little film’s relative obscurity may hurt her victory chances. (Sixth pick: Frances McDormand in “North Country.”)
Director
George Clooney (“Good Night, and Good Luck.”)
David Cronenberg (“A History of Violence”)
Paul Haggis (“Crash”)
Ang Lee (“Brokeback Mountain”)
Steven Spielberg (“Munich”)
Here’s a hunch that David Cronenberg, who was stiffed by his fellow DGA directors, will replace “Capote’s” Bennett Miller and pull off one “History of Violence” nod from the Academy group. ( Sixth pick: Miller for “Capote.”)
Best foreign language picture
“Fateless” (Hungary; Lajos Koltai)
“The Italian” (Russia; Andrei Kravchuk)
“Joyeux Noel” (France; Christian Carion)
“Paradise Now” (Palestine; Hany Abu-Assad)
“Tsotsi” (South Africa; Gavin Hood)
Coming out of Cannes, the big critical hit was Belgium’s Palme d’Or winner “L’Enfant” from the Dardenne brothers, but — par for the course in this category — it was less well-received by the Los Angeles Academy voters than favorites “Tsotsi” (South Africa) and “Joyeux Noel” (France).
(Sixth pick: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne for “L’Enfant”)
My personal favorites from 2005
Best picture: “King Kong,” because it embraces both the movie’spast and present with spectacle, wit and amazing craft.
Best actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman (“Capote”), who conveys both the piquant surface and the troubled essence of a deeply complex man, carrying us from antic gaiety to dark moral failure.
Best actress: Liv Ullmann (“Saraband”), a virtuoso actress turns her last performance for her great director, Ingmar Bergman, into a quiet, piercing study in witness and empathy.
Best supporting actor: Ben Kingsley (“Oliver Twist”). Playing “Twist’s” Jewish villain Fagin can be both a terrific opportunity and a minefield for an actor; Kingsley makes the old pickpocket king convincing and even tragic.
Best supporting actress: Amy Adams (“Junebug”). Among the relative new faces, Adams’ young Southern wife was the performance of the year: real, human and deeply moving.
Best director: Ingmar Bergman (“Saraband”). The greatest living filmmaker, now 87, delivers his stirring valedictory.
Best foreign language picture: “Saraband” (Sweden: Ingmar Bergman). A great cast, under Bergman’s hand, plays a quartet of anguish in the same somber key as his past masterpieces. Runner-up: Marco Tullio Giordana’s “The Best of Youth,” a marvelous, sprawling Italian film novel about families and 20th Century politics.
My all-time favorite Academy non-winners
Best picture: “Citizen Kane” (1941) — Orson Welles’ impudent masterpiece about the rise and fall of a reckless newspaper tycoon is still, for me, the pinnacle of moviemaking. (Others: “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “Dr. Strangelove ,” “Apocalypse Now.”)
Best actor: (Tie) James Stewart (“It’s a Wonderful Life”) (1946) and Marlon Brando (“A Streetcar Named Desire”) (1951) — Probably no single movie performance has moved more audiences than Jimmy Stewart’s small-town guy George Bailey in Frank Capra’s ultimate Christmas classic. And no performance did more to revolutionize movie acting than Brando’s sexy brute Stanley Kowalski in the Elia Kazan-Tennessee Williams trailblazer. (Others: Charles Chaplin in “The Great Dictator,” Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove.” )
Best actress: Katharine Hepburn (“Long Day’s Journey Into Night”) (1962) — Hepburn may have won four Oscars, but she was snubbed for her finest screen work, as morphine-ravaged Mary Tyrone in Sidney Lumet’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s heartbreaking semiautobiographical drama. (Others: Gena Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence.”)
Best supporting actor: Al Pacino (“The Godfather”) (1972) — Pacino’s poker-faced mobster-on-the-rise Michael Corleone is the most impressive of all supporting actor Oscar-losers — even if you argue that it’s really a leading role in disguise.
Best supporting actress: Agnes Moorehead (“The Magnificent Ambersons”) (1942) — Moorehead’s hysterical aria as fallen upper-class spinster Aunt Fanny is one of the most magnificent of all high-voltage dramatic film scenes.
Best director: Orson Welles (“Citizen Kane”) (1941) — It’s a seeming cliche but true: Welles’ enormous achievement (he was a 25-year-old first time filmmaker) remains unsurpassed.
Best foreign language film: “Tristana” (Spain; Luis Bunuel, 1970) — Among many undeserving losers in this often-dysfunctional category is Luis Bunuel’s 1970 classic of erotic revenge, starring Catherine Deneuve.
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mwilmington@tribune.com
