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72nd ACADEMY AWARD
NOMINATIONS
American Beauty Earns Eight Oscar Nominations Carrey, Hanks not in the race
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American Beauty, a black comedy about a family falling apart in suburbia,
came up roses in the Academy Award nominations announced on February 15,
earning the most — eight — nominations, but The Cider House
Rules, The Insider, The Green Mile and The Sixth Sense also blossomed
as strong Oscar contenders.
Among the nominations American Beauty earned were for Best Picture, Best
Director for first-time helmsman Sam Mendes, Best Actor for Kevin Spacey
and Best Actress for Annette Bening.
Tied for second place with seven nominations each were The Cider House
Rules, John Irving’s tale of a saintly orphan, and The Insider, a
story of a tobacco industry whistle-blower, who almost brings down one
of U.S. television’s major shows, 60 Minutes.
Coming next with six nominations was last year’s biggest box-office
hit, The Sixth Sense, a ghost story about a young boy who talks to dead
people — a film that audiences loved but many critics failed to include
in their 10-best lists.
At age 79, veteran actor Richard Farnsworth became the oldest man ever
nominated for Best Actor for his performance in The Straight Story, while
Haley Joel Osment, 11, became one of the youngest nominees ever, being
tapped in the Best Supporting Actor category for his role in The Sixth
Sense.
Robert Rehme, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
that gives the Oscars, before reading out the nomination list, called
it “eclectic and strong,” and said of the bunched-up field of
contenders, “there’s no favorite among them.” He was joined
by actor Dustin Hoffman in declaring the nominations.
Joining Spacey (who already has bagged one Oscar for Best Supporting Actor
for The Usual Suspects)) and Farnsworth among Best Actor nominees were
Australian Russell Crowe for The Insider, Denzel Washington for his powerful
portrayal of wrongly imprisoned boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter
in The Hurricane, and, in a surprise, Sean Penn, for Woody Allen’s
comedy about a not-so-nice jazz guitarist, Sweet And Lowdown.
Farnsworth, a former stuntman who started acting at age 57, became the
oldest actor ever nominated for an Academy Award. But the 79-year-old
is not the oldest person ever nominated for an Oscar. That distinction
belonged to Gloria Stuart, who was nominated at age 87, for Best Supporting
Actress in Titanic in 1998.
One of the biggest surprises in the nominations was the omission of Jim
Carrey for his uncanny portrayal of the late comic Andy Kaufman in Man
On The Moon. It was the second straight year that a major performance
by Carrey failed to win an Oscar nomination — and even Academy President
Rehme said he was taken aback. “The biggest surprise for me when
I read the nomination list was that Jim Carrey was shut out again,”
he told reporters. Carrey had been snubbed last year by Oscar voters inspite
of putting in a strong performance in The Truman Show.
Another surprise was that Tom Hanks failed to secure a Best Actor nomination
for The Green Mile.
Also nearly shut out of the major categories was serial-killer drama The
Talented Mr. Ripley, director Anthony Minghella’s first major film
since the Oscar-winning The English Patient. ...Ripley claimed only one
nomination in the top categories - Jude Law for Best Supporting Actor.
In the Best Actress category, American Beauty’s Annette Bening was
nominated along with critics’ favorite Hilary Swank, whose role as
a gender-confused woman, who masquerades as a man in Boys Don’t Cry
has won her many awards so far this year, and British actress Janet McTeer
for the little-seen film, Tumbleweeds.
Julianne Moore also bagged a Best Actress nomination for portraying the
heroine in Graham Greene’s drama of ill-fated lovers, The End Of
The Affair, alongwith previous Oscar-winner Meryl Streep in Music Of The
Heart, a story of a New York City school-teacher who brings music to disadvantaged
students.
Among the Best Director nominees were newcomer Spike Jonze for Being John
Malkovich, Lasse Hallstrom for The Cider House Rules, Michael Mann for
The Insider, M. Night Shyamalan for The Sixth Sense and Sam Mendes for
American Beauty.
Besides Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) and Jude Law (The Talented
Mr. Ripley), the Best Supporting Actor category nominees included Tom
Cruise for his portrayal of a motivational speaker, who teaches men how
to pick up women in Magnolia, veteran British actor Michael Caine for
The Cider House Rules, and Michael Clarke Duncan for The Green Mile.
The Best Supporting Actress nominees were Golden Globe-winner Angelina
Jolie for Girl, Interrupted, Toni Collette for The Sixth Sense, Catherine
Keener for Being John Malkovich, Samantha Morton for Sweet And Lowdown,
and Chloe Sevigny for Boys Don’t Cry.
The Best Foreign Film category held several surprises, even though Spanish
director Pedro Almodovar’s widely praised All About My Mother is
the favourite. It was joined by the first-ever nominee from Nepal, Caravan,
and a film in Welsh, Solomon And Gaenor, from the United Kingdom. Also
nominated were Sweden’s Under The Sun and France’s East-West.
Nominees in most of the 23 categories were chosen by specific branches
of the Academy’s 5,300 members, such as actors, directors and film
editors, while all Academy members were allowed to cast votes for Best
Picture nominees.
The Oscars will be presented on March 26, at the Shrine Auditorium, in
Los Angeles. Billy Crystal, who has been an emcee for the past six Oscar
shows, will return as host after turning the job over to Whoopi Goldberg
last year.
Actor, director and producer Warren Beatty will receive the Academy’s
Irving G. Thalberg award, which is presented to producers whose work represents
a “consistently high quality of motion picture production.”
