Tension reached fever pitch as Hollywood began the final countdown to Sunday’s Oscars, with a posse of ”serious” films, led by Brokeback Mountain, set to overrun the big night.
As workers frantically put the finishing touches on preparations for the 78th annual Academy Awards, which start with the legendary red carpet celebrity fashion show, the anxious nominees are crossing their fingers.
In a year laden with small-budget movies packing weighty political or social messages, Taiwan director Ang Lee’s film about gay cowboys is the frontrunner for the top awards, including best picture and best director.
”We’re almost there and I think Brokeback is still leading the race,” said veteran Hollywood Reporter online columnist Marty
Grove.
But the aching story of two macho farmhands who fall in love despite themselves and pursue an unfulfilled 20-year romance faces a last-minute challenge from a dark horse, Paul Haggis’s racial drama Crash.
”The buzz is that the threat to Brokeback from Crash is now very real,” awards expert Tom O’Neil of the website theEnvelope.com said of the tiny independent movie that may crash Ang Lee’s party.
”Brokeback has a passionate following, but you also have Capote and Transamerica this year and they may have created a
gay fatigue,” he told Agence France-Presse.
But like other pundits, O’Neil is still betting that the offbeat Western which has swept Hollywood’s awards season and led the Oscars race from the start will still rope in five statuettes on Sunday.
It rides into the Oscars armed with a leading eight nominations, including best picture, director, best actor for Australia’s Heath Ledger and best supporting role nods for Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams.
The movie faces off against the six-times nominated Crash, about a group of ethnically diverse people whose lives collide in a Los Angeles car accident, and George Clooney’s political drama Good Night, and Good Luck, which is also up for six awards.
Also competing for best picture are Munich — Steven Spielberg’s epic about the aftermath of the Palestinian massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics — and Capote, about United States author Truman Capote, both of which are up for five Oscars.
Capote star Philip Seymour Hoffman is widely favoured to win the best actor Oscar for his staggering title role in Bennett Miller’s biopic, facing off against the Australian star of Brokeback, Heath Ledger (26).
Also vying for the award is Joaquin Phoenix, who played country star Johnny Cash in the biopic Walk the Line, nominated for five Oscars, David Strathairn, for his role as newsman Ed Murrow in Good Night, and Terrence Howard for Hustle and Flow.
”The Oscars upsets almost always happen in the supporting actor categories, so we may see the jaw-dropper of the evening be Jake or Michelle winning for Brokeback,” O’Neil said.
Most pundits predict that Briton Rachel Weisz will win the women’s award for her role as an activist fighting the pharmaceutical industry in Kenya in The Constant Gardner, with Williams — Heath Ledger’s real-life fiancee — trailing for her portrayal of his cuckolded wife in Brokeback.
Also competing for best supporting actress are Frances McDormand for North Country, Amy Adams for Junebug and Catherine Keener, who played writer Harper Lee in Capote.
Heartthrob Clooney is tipped to beat out Gyllenhaal and win best supporting actor for his role as a CIA spy in the oil industry thriller Syriana.
Clooney, who is up for three Oscars, also faces competition from Paul Giammati for Cinderella Man, Matt Dillon for Crash, and William Hurt for A History of Violence.
Facing off against frontrunner Ang Lee for best director are Capote‘s Miller, Haggis for Crash, Clooney as director of Good Night, and Spielberg for Munich, the only big-budget film in the major categories.
The politically outspoken Clooney is also nominated for his best original screenplay for Good Night, the story of newsman Ed Murrow’s crusade against the repression of the US and-Communist witch hunt of the 1950s.
The political current running through this year’s Oscars is further stoked by the Palestinian best foreign language film contender Paradise Now, about two friends who become suicide bombers, a nomination that infuriated many Israelis.
It competes against France’s World War I story Joyeux Noel, Italy’s story of sex abuse, Don’t Tell, Germany’s Sophie Scholl — The Final Days and South Africa’s crime drama Tsotsi, by Gavin Hood.
”Oscar has gone very serious this year,” Grove said of the nominees. ”In the past, the Oscars were only about great filmmaking and entertainment, but now its about passing on an important message.” – Sapa-AFP