PARK CITY, UTAH — In a year without a dominant must-see movie, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave Dreamgirls the most nominations, with eight, but grudgingly so, since the musical was excluded from best picture or best-director honours. And given that three of Dreamgirls' eight nominations are for best song, that whittles down its chances to just five Oscars.
The academy members were unusually globally minded this year, with other top-nominated films not originating in the United States. There were seven nominations for the multilingual Babel and six each for the Spanish-language Pan's Labyrinth and the English Royal Family drama The Queen. But if they start feeling more parochial as voting day approaches, Little Miss Sunshine, a rare Oscar-nominated comedy, is now poised as a strong contender.
No blockbuster grabbed the academy's heart. Though the summer hit Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is only the third film in history to top $1-billion in box-office sales worldwide after Titanic and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, each of the latter two films swept the awards with 11 Oscars each, while Pirates is limited to just four nominations in technical categories.
The final ballots will be mailed on Jan. 31 and are due in on Feb. 20. The Oscars will be held at the Kodak Theater on Sunday, Feb. 25, and will be broadcast by ABC in the United States and CTV in Canada. Nominations were announced at 5:38 a.m. yesterday from the Academy's Beverly Hills headquarters by academy president Sid Ganis and actress Salma Hayek, who couldn't resist a brief yip of delight when her good friend Penelope Cruz was announced as a best-actress nominee for her role in the Spanish film Volver.
The Academy gave Dreamgirls the most nominations, with eight, but grudgingly so, since the musical was excluded from best picture or best-director honours. (AP)
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Along with Cruz's nomination, other best-actress nominations went to category favourite Helen Mirren for The Queen, Judi Dench for Notes on a Scandal, Meryl Streep for The Devil Wears Prada and Kate Winslet for Little Children.
In the male category, the nominees were Leonardo DiCaprio for Blood Diamond, Canadian Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson, Peter O'Toole for Venus, Will Smith for The Pursuit of Happyness and Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland.
Along with Gosling, who played a drug-addicted schoolteacher in Half Nelson, other Canadian nominees included Deepa Mehta for best foreign-language film for her historical drama Water, set in India,and Paul Haggis, who shares screenplay credit on Letters from Iwo Jima with Japanese-American first-time screenwriter Iris Yamashita. The National Film Board's The Danish Poet, a film by Torill Kove, was nominated in the best-animated-short-film category.
Dreamgirls' absence in the best-picture category must be regarded as an upset.
Some commentators looked back as far as Hud (1963) and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) for a comparable case of a multiple-nominee being shut out of the best-picture nominations. The movie remains a favourite for the best-supporting-actress prize for American Idol runner-up Jennifer Hudson and the best-supporting-actor nomination for Eddie Murphy.
In 16 of the past 20 years, the picture with the most nominations went on to win best picture, so DreamWorks/Paramount might be reconsidering its campaign that saw Dreamgirls's gradual roll-out after a Christmas Day release. With the shortened Oscar season since 2004, frantic advocacy seems to beat tony marketing. In accepting the Golden Globe for best musical, Jamie Foxx pointedly remarked on Dreamgirls's presence in only 800 theatres.
Otherwise, the best-picture category reflects an increasing global awareness of the United States as interconnected to other cultures, as represented by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's globe-hopping drama Babel, which made Oscar history by managing to have supporting-actress nominees in the same movie speaking Spanish (Mexican actress Adriana Barraza) and Japanese (Rinko Kikuchi).
Fellow Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, a beautifully rendered dark fairy tale set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, managed six awards without any in the directing or acting categories.
Clint Eastwood's best-picture nomination for the Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima may indicate a lack of strong contenders in this year's field. The film was reportedly pushed to an earlier release to gain some Oscar bump after Eastwood's companion film, Flags of Our Fathers, failed to catch box-office fire.
Long-esteemed but under-awarded Martin Scorsese has earned his seventh nomination as best director (with no wins) for the biggest-grossing film of his career, the star-heavy dirty cops and robbers tale The Departed.
The movie earned directing and best-picture nominations, but only one supporting-actor nomination for Mark Wahlberg while 12-time Oscar winner Jack Nicholson was ignored. Departed's star Leonard DiCaprio was also overlooked, but earned an acting nomination for another film, Blood Diamond.
The dysfunctional family comedy Little Miss Sunshine, purchased for $12-million at Sundance last year, earned four nominations, including best-supporting nominations for 72-year-old actor Alan Arkin and 10-year-old actress Abigail Breslin. Paradoxically, the movie, a satire about the American obsession with awards and winning, has run an aggressive Oscar campaign for the most coveted prize in show business. Entertainment Weekly columnist Mark Harris noted last week that Fox Searchlight has done everything but trademark the colour yellow in the attempt to drive the Little Miss Sunshine bus all the way to the Kodak Theatre.
Directing nods went to four of the five best-picture nominees (excluding Little Miss Sunshine), with best-directing nominations to Inarritu for Babel, Scorsese for The Departed, Clint Eastwood for Letters from Iwo Jima and English director Stephen Frears for The Queen (as well as toPaul Greengrass for United 93). No real surprises here, except for the overlooking of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's role in creating a strong part for Cruz in Volver.
In the acting categories, the most interesting off-screen drama may be the race between the favourite, Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin in the much-awarded but little-seen The Last King of Scotland, versus 74-year-old Peter O'Toole as an aging roué/actor in Venus. O'Toole is currently tied with his late drinking buddy, Richard Burton, for seven nominations and no wins, so in a sense, either way he wins some kind of distinction. Frequent figure-of-fun Ben Affleck, who won good reviews and a Venice Film Festival prize as George Reeves, TV's Superman, in the movie Hollywoodland, missed the cut.
In the supporting-actor category, first-time nominee Jackie Earle Haley, as a recently paroled child molester in Little Children, stands out as the actor most-likely-to-be-grateful-to-be-nominated.
The women's categories underline the arbitrary nature of the lead/supporting-role division, in which studios nominate performers strategically. Meryl Streep's secondary part in The Devil Wears Prada will contend for best actress against favourite Mirren's large role in The Queen, while newcomer Hudson is nominated for best supporting role in what is at least a co-lead performance with Beyoncé Knowles in Dreamgirls.
In a two-handed drama, Notes from a Scandal, Dench is being pushed for a best-actress nod, while her partner Cate Blanchett is advanced for the best-supporting-actress prize.
One of the positive aspects of the Dreamgirls nominations is that Academy Awards viewers on Feb. 25 are at least guaranteed some strong musical performances this year, to compensate for the lack of excitement an Oscar sweep can generate.
"It is one of the hardest roles to play, not just a living person but one is part of everyday lives in Britain. Helen Mirren, on her best actress nomination for The Queen.
"I'm very happy for Martin Scorsese. He's been overlooked too long. Leonardo DiCaprio, best actor nominee for Blood Diamond and co-star of Scorsese's The Departed.
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