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The Oscar line-up

Brokeback Mountainleads the field

IN GOLD: Fifty Oscar statuettes for the 78th Academy Awards displayed in New York's Times Square Studios. They are to be presented on March 5. — AP

BEVERLY HILLS: The cowboy love story Brokeback Mountain led the Academy Awards field on Tuesday with eight nominations, among them best picture and honours for actor Heath Ledger and director Ang Lee.

Also nominated for best picture were the Truman Capote story, Capote, the ensemble drama Crash, the Edward R. Murrow chronicle, Good Night, and Good Luck," and the assassination thriller, Munich. The Johnny Cash biography, Walk the Line, considered a likely best-picture nominee, was shut out of that category, though Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon earned acting nominations.

Three films were tied with six nominations each — Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck and Memoirs of a Geisha, though Geisha was shut out in the top categories.

Analysts' best picture

Munich, which had fallen off many awards analysts' best picture picks after a lukewarm reception, scored well with five nominations, including director for Steven Spielberg. King Kong, directed by Lord of the Rings creator Peter Jackson, earned only technical nominations, losing out in the major categories.

George Clooney picked up three nominations: as supporting actor for his role as a steadfast CIA undercover agent in Syriana, and best director and co-writer for Good Night. It was the first time that a contender was honoured with acting and directing nominations for two different movies.

With best-actor contender Ledger, and directing nominee Lee, Brokeback Mountain scored nominations for Michelle Williams as supporting actress, Jake Gyllenhaal as supporting actor and Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana for their screenplay adaptation of Annie Proulx's short story.

The acting categories were a mix of familiar faces such as past winners Judi Dench and Charlize Theron, veterans like Clooney, Witherspoon, Rachel Weisz, David Strathairn and Felicity Huffman gaining their first academy attention, and young performers such as Williams and Amy Adams.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, the best-actor favourite for his remarkable embodiment of Capote, joined Ledger in the best-actor category. Hoffman has triumphed at earlier film honours, including the Golden Globes. Along with Hoffman, Ledger and Phoenix, the other nominees were Terrence Howard as a small-time hood turned rap singer in Hustle & Flow and Strathairn as newsman Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck.

Two-woman race

The best actress race presumably will shape up as a two-woman contest between Huffman in a gender-bending role as a man about to undergo sex-change surgery in Transamerica and Witherspoon as singer June Carter, Cash's musical companion and future wife, in Walk the Line. Huffman won the Golden Globe for best dramatic actress, while Witherspoon earned the Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy. Witherspoon beat Huffman on Sunday for the best-actress prize at the Screen Actors' Guild Awards.

Also nominated for best-actress: Dench as a society dame who starts a nude stage revue in 1930s London in Mrs. Henderson Presents, Keira Knightley as the romantic heroine of the Jane Austen adaptation Pride & Prejudice and Charlize Theron as a mine worker who leads a sexual-harassment lawsuit against male co-workers in North Country.

Brokeback Mountain led a wave of independent films that scored big in the nominations, instead of the studio fare that normally dominates the Oscars. Other than Munich, most bigger-budget movies that had been on the best-picture radar, such as Walk the Line, Memoirs of a Geisha and Cinderella Man were overlooked in the top Oscar category.

The year's biggest hit, Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, earned only one nomination, for makeup, but was shut out otherwise — including the visual-effects category, a blow to George Lucas and his Industrial Light & Magic outfit that has pioneered special effects. The visual effects nominees were The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, King Kong, and Spielberg's War of the Worlds.

A first

It was the first time since 1981 that the same five movies were nominated for directing and best picture. For the first time since the animated feature film category was added in 2001 that no nominees were made using computer-generated imagery. The nominees: the hand-drawn Howl's Moving Castle and the stop-motion films, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Oscar nominees in most categories are chosen by specific branches of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, such as directors, actors and writers. The full academy membership of about 5,800 is eligible to vote in all categories for the Oscars themselves. — AP

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