2005
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Filmsite's Greatest Films
of 2005
Best Picture
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/crash2005.jpg)
CRASH (2005)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/brokebackmtn.jpg)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/capote.jpg)
Capote (2005)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/goodnightgoodluck.jpg)
Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/munich.jpg)
Munich (2005)
|
Best Animated Feature Film
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/curseofwere-rabbit.jpg)
(WALLACE & GROMIT IN) THE CURSE OF THE
WERE-RABBIT (2005, UK)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/howlsmovingc.jpg)
Howl's Moving Castle (2004, Jp.)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/corpsebride.jpg)
(Tim Burton's) Corpse Bride (2005)
|
|
|
Actor:
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN in "Capote," Terrence Howard
in "Hustle
& Flow," Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain," Joaquin
Phoenix in "Walk the Line," David Strathairn in "Good
Night, and Good Luck."
Actress:
REESE WITHERSPOON in "Walk the Line," Judi Dench in "Mrs.
Henderson Presents," Felicity Huffman in "Transamerica," Keira
Knightley in "Pride & Prejudice," Charlize Theron
in "North Country"
Supporting Actor:
GEORGE CLOONEY in "Syriana," Matt Dillon in "Crash," Paul
Giamatti in "Cinderella Man," Jake Gyllenhaal in "Brokeback
Mountain," William Hurt in "A History of Violence"
Supporting Actress:
RACHEL WEISZ in "The Constant Gardener," Amy Adams
in "Junebug,"
Catherine Keener in "Capote," Frances McDormand in "North
Country,"
Michelle Williams in "Brokeback Mountain"
Director:
ANG LEE for "Brokeback Mountain," George Clooney for "Good
Night, and Good Luck.," Paul Haggis for "Crash," Bennett
Miller for "Capote," Steven Spielberg for "Munich"
The
Academy Award honorees for this year, for the most part, continued
the trend away from big-budget, mega-blockbusters and aimed
at smaller independent efforts. Four of the five Best Picture
nominees were independently financed, including the winner Crash.
In recent memory, the last time this happened was in 1996,
when four of the five top nominees (The English Patient, Fargo, Secrets & Lies, Shine -
and Jerry Maguire) were independent productions.
Many of the themes of the nominees were focused
on sociopolitical issues (corporate corruption), provocative
socially-relevant ideas (racial tension and terrorism), and
intimate personal themes (gay and transgender). There was a
perceived backlash against flashy, "popcorn"
Best Picture nominees/winners, such as Gladiator (2000), Chicago
(2002), and The
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) in this
decade. Mega-budget box-office blockbusters that received minimal
nominations included:
- Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong (with
only 4 technical nominations, and three wins: Best Visual
Effects, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing)
- director Andrew Adamson's The
Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (with
3 technical nominations and one win for Best Makeup),
an adaptation of C. S. Lewis' second book in Narnia series
about good and evil in a magical land
- Steven Spielberg's sci-fi thriller remake War
of the Worlds (with 3 technical nominations)
- the adaptation of best-seller J. K. Rowling's Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire (with only 1 nomination,
Best Art Direction) - the fourth Harry Potter
film in five years
- Christopher Nolan's comic-book superhero film Batman
Begins (with 1 nomination, Best Cinematography)
- George Lucas' Star
Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (with
1 nomination, Best Makeup)
- Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory (with 1 nomination, Best Costume Design)
The five low-budget Best Picture nominees fairly
evenly split the major nominations - no film received more
than 8 nominations. This was also the first time since 1947
that no picture won more than 3 Oscars. They were all modest
in scope, and challenged political, sexual and intellectual
mores. Two were biopics. Focus Features topped all other studios
with 16 nominations, including its Best picture contender Brokeback
Mountain (8), The Constant Gardener (4) and Pride & Prejudice (4).
Of the five nominees, only one of them had a budget over $14
million (Spielberg's Munich at $70 million), and three
of them were budgeted at about $7 million. The combined gross
of all five nominees was a very low $187 million, and none of
the films grossed more than $53 million at the box-office at
the time of the nomination's announcements in late January.
When the final tally of Oscars was determined,
the awards were sparsely divided among all the major film nominees.
For the first time in 49 years (since 1956) and only the third time
in Oscar's 78-year history (it also occurred in 1952), six
different films split the top six Oscars (Best Picture, Director,
Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress).
The Best Picture winner was a major upset sleeper
film - Crash (with 6 nominations and three wins, also
for Best Film Editing and director Paul Haggis' Best Original
Screenplay) - it was an ensemble film about racism involving
whites, blacks, Latinos, Koreans, and Iranians that was centered
around a killing in Los Angeles which might have been racially
motivated. Its tagline was: "Moving at the speed of life, we
are bound to collide with each other." For two consecutive
years, therefore, the Best Picture winner was set in Los Angeles
(the previous year's winner was Million
Dollar Baby (2004)). [Note: Some noted its aggressive
studio campaign that sent pre-release DVDs of the film to
nearly every person involved in the motion picture industry
-- possibly a new trend in future marketing campaigns. Reportedly,
Lions Gate Films spent $4 million promoting a film that cost
only about $6.5 million to make.]
Crash was an anomaly winner for many reasons:
- it was originally released in 2004, but did
not qualify for the 2004 Academy Awards because it did not
play at least one week in L.A.; when it officially opened
in L.A. in May of 2005, it then qualified for Oscars consideration
- it marked the first time a film-festival
acquisition (after its premiere at the September 2004 Toronto
Film Festival) won Best Picture
- at the time of this win, it was no longer
playing in theaters (but was available on DVD); short-term
memory (sometimes a factor) may have been the reason it was
overlooked in the pre-Oscar awards season
- it won the fewest Oscars for a Best
Picture winner since Rocky (1976) (both
won 3 Oscars)
- it had only six nominations (the front-runner Brokeback
Mountain had 8) - only four times in the past twenty-five
years has the Best Picture winner not also been the film
with the most nominations
- it didn't win any acting awards
- it didn't win Best Director also
- it was an independent film made on a budget
of $6.5 million; it was bankrolled by Bob Yari, another real
estate developer turned film producer
- it had the lowest Best Picture theatrical
gross total ($53.4 million) since Best Picture-winning The
Last Emperor (1987) (at $44 million), while favored nominee Brokeback
Mountain had over twice the box-office results at $120
million worldwide (the highest grossing film of the five
nominees)
- it won the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) ensemble
award, the Chicago Critics award (due to strong endorsements
by Roger Ebert), and an Image Award - and not much else before
the Oscars ceremony
- it wasn't even nominated for Best Picture
by the Golden Globes - (a nomination that has occurred in
18 of the previous 22 years for Best Picture winners); only
once, in 1973, did a film that wasn't nominated for the Golden
Globe's Best Picture go on to win the Academy Award (that
movie was The Sting (1973), and it wasn't nominated
because of a mix-up at the Golden Globes over category confusion
(drama vs. comedy))
- it was poorly received by most critics and
ratings before the Oscars ceremony: its "metacritic" score
(69) was the lowest among the Best Picture nominees: Capote (88), Brokeback
Mountain (87), Good Night, and Good Luck (80),
and Munich (74)
- critical rankings for films of the year in
both Premiere Magazine's and Entertainment Weekly's
polling showed it to be way behind the front-runner, Brokeback
Mountain
- it told a personal story with an ensemble
cast about a divisive social issue
- it marked the first time that a film
(Brokeback Mountain) that had won the Writer's Guild,
Director's Guild, and Producer's Guild awards, did not go
on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture - some argued
that homophobia was mostly to blame
The other four nominees for Best Picture were:
- Brokeback Mountain (with 8 nominations
and three wins for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay
and Best Original Score), a melodrama about two young cowboys
who had an unexpected tryst while shepherding in 1963, and
how it affected their married lives in the following three
decades; the most honored movie in cinematic history
(it had more Best Picture and Director wins than previous
Oscar winners Schindler's List (1993) and Titanic
(1997) combined), it was the critical darling of the
media and the expected favorite to win [If it had won the
top award, it would have been the first predominately gay-themed
film to accomplish that feat]; the film was adapted from
an eleven-page 1997 short story by E. Annie Proulx originally
published in The New Yorker Magazine
- Capote (with 6 nominations, and only
one win for Best Actor), was a biopic about gay author Truman
Capote's journalistic relationship with troubled serial killer
Perry Smith while researching his 1966 'non-fiction' book In
Cold Blood (later made into the noted film starring Robert
Blake), and how the situation ruined his mental health, leading
to an early death at the age of 59
- Good Night, and Good Luck (with 6 nominations
and no wins), was a B/W biopic about legendary radio and
CBS television news reporter Edward R. Murrow, focusing on
his challenging attack in the mid 50s on red-baiting Senator
Joseph R. McCarthy and McCarthyism; historical politician
McCarthy "played" himself in archival footage,
rather than being portrayed by an actor; nominated director
George Clooney was also nominated for his Best Original Screenplay;
it was the first completely black-and-white film to be nominated
for Best Picture since The Elephant Man (1980)
- Munich (with 5 nominations and no wins),
was Steven Spielberg's box-office failure - a political thriller/morality
play 'inspired by real events' -- that followed the 1972
massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich,
involving a secret Israeli squad assigned by prime minister
Golda Meir to kill those who perpetrated the attack; this
was the only film among the top nominees that was
100% underwritten by a major studio (Universal)
Other notable multiple award winners/nominees
were:
- Chicago (2002) director Rob Marshall's
overblown and over-hyped Memoirs of a Geisha (with
6 (mostly technical) nominations including three wins for
Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction/Set
Decoration)
- the conventional musical biopic Walk the
Line (with 5 nominations and only one win for Best
Actress) from director James Mangold based on Johnny Cash's
own books Man in Black and Cash: The Autobiography
- Traffic (2000) screenwriter Stephen
Gaghan's similarly-convoluted Syriana (with a win
for Best Supporting Actor for George Clooney and a nomination
for Best Original Screenplay), which focused on oil companies'
effects on geopolitics
All five of the Best Picture-nominated directors
were nominated for Best Director - the first occurrence in
24 years! This was very rare and happened only three
other times in Oscar history: 1957, 1964, and 1981. [Note:
Of the five nominees, only Steven Spielberg has been
a beneficiary both times - in 1981, Spielberg's Raiders
of the Lost Ark (1981) was nominated in both categories.]
The Best Director winner was veteran director
Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain (he was previously nominated
for directing and producing the foreign-language film Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - the best Foreign Language
Film winner!). He was notable for being the first Asian
(or non-white) filmmaker to win the top film-making honor.
The only other nominated veteran director was six-time Best
Director-nominated and two-time Best Director winner Steven
Spielberg, for Munich -- (previously winning three Oscars:
Best Director for Best Picture-winning Schindler's
List (1993) and Best Director for Saving Private
Ryan (1998)). Spielberg was also nominated for producing Munich.
Two other Best Director nominees, both first-timers,
also attained milestones in Oscar history:
- actor/director George Clooney was nominated
for Good Night, and Good Luck (his second feature
film)
[Note: With two of his three nominations this year, the first
nominations in his career, George Clooney was the first to
receive directing and acting nominations for two different films
in the same year. He didn't win any awards for Good Night,
and Good Luck, however]
- Canadian director/writer/producer Paul Haggis
was nominated for his directorial debut film Crash (he
received his 2nd-4th career nominations, for Best Original
Screenplay, Best Picture (Producer), and Best Director for
the film)
[Note: With his two Academy Awards Oscars, for Best Original
Screenplay and Best Picture, he became the first person
to have written two consecutive Best Pictures (he wrote
the screenplay for last year's Million Dollar Baby (2004))]
The fifth Best Director nominee was Bennett Miller
(with his first nomination) for his first narrative feature
film Capote.
Special mention should be made of the fact that
Woody Allen earned his 14th career writing nomination (all
for Best Original Screenplay) for Match Point - it was
his 21st career nomination. He has won the Best Original Screenplay
Oscar twice, for Annie Hall (1977) and Hannah
and Her Sisters (1986), the only Allen films nominated
for Best Picture, and he won the Best Director Oscar for Annie
Hall (1977). The next closest nominee remained Billy
Wilder, with 12 career writing nominations and 3 career writing
wins.
For the first time in the short history of the
Best Animated Feature Film category, none of the three
nominees were CGI films, although that could be accounted for
since Pixar (winner of last year's award for The Incredibles
(2004)) took the year off. All three were only moderately
successful, scarcely making $100 million in total. The winner
was: Aardman Animation's second feature-length 'claymation'
and first feature-length Wallace and Gromit film from
co-directors Nick Park and Steve Box (with this being his third
Oscar win) - Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,
about eccentric, cheese-loving inventor Wallace (voice of Peter
Sallis) and his faithful mute dog assistant Gromit. This was
the first stop-motion/'claymation' film to win the Best
Animated Feature award.
[Nick Park's prior Wallace and Gromit short
films, A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers
(1993), and A Close Shave (1995) were all nominated
for Best Animated Short Oscars, with the latter two winning,
and the former losing to another of Park's nominated short
films Creature Comforts (1989) - giving him his first Oscar.
This Oscar, his fourth, maintained Park's streak of winning
every category he'd been nominated for.]
The other nominees in the Best Animated Feature
Film category were:
- famed anime director Hayao Miyazaki's
traditionally cel-animated Howl's Moving Castle (aka Hauru
no ugoku shiro), about a young girl who was transformed
by a jealous witch into an old woman, and fell in love with
a brash young sorceror [Note: In the second year of this
category, Miyazaki won the Best Animated Feature Film Academy
Award in 2002 for his enchanting fantasy Spirited Away
(2001, Jp.)]
- producer/director Tim Burton's macabre stop-motion
animated Tim Burton's Corpse Bride about a shy, bumbling
groom-to-be Victor (voice of Johnny Depp) who accidentally
married a recently dead, wedding dress-wearing woman (voice
of Helena Bonham Carter) [Note: Unbelievably, this was the
first Oscar nomination for the long-neglected producer/director
Tim Burton, who was overlooked for Best Director for such
films as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), Batman
(1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Ed
Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999) and Big Fish
(2003)]
The Best Documentary Feature category featured
among its five nominees three strong contenders, with the winner:
Luc Jacquet's absorbing March of the Penguins - the
highest-grossing nature documentary to date (at $77.4 million),
about the mating rituals and breeding cycle of flightless Emperor
penguins in Antarctica. March of the Penguins was the first nature
documentary to win Best Documentary Feature since The Hellstrom
Chronicle (1971). The other nominees included:
- a polished, well-researched, and spellbinding Enron:
The Smartest Guys in the Room about the rise and scandalous
bankruptcy-fall of the 7th largest company in the US -
Enron, a major energy company in Texas
- the disturbing, cautionary nature film Darwin's
Nightmare about a socio-economic disaster - how a single
invasive species of alien fish (the Nile perch or Lates
niloticus), introduced 40-50 years ago, has had a devastating
ecological effect upon a thriving Tanzanian biosystem,
Lake Victoria - coexisting with the people's famine and
poverty
All four winners in the acting categories were
first-time nominees - marking the first time this has
happened since 1961 (Maximilian Schell, Sophia Loren, George
Chakiris, Rita Moreno). In fact, 14 of the twenty nominees
were first-timers, the highest number in nine years! (Four
of the six remaining veterans had won one Oscar: William Hurt
in 1985, Frances McDormand in 1996, Judi Dench in 1998, and
Charlize Theron in 2003. Joaquin Phoenix and Catherine Keener
had never won.) The average age of this year's nominees, at
the time of the announcement of nominations, was 38, younger
when compared to the average of 41 in 2004. Nine of the 20
acting nominees were aged 35 or under - four more than last
year - while six of them were in their 20s. Four of the nominees:
Matt Dillon, David Strathairn, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and
George Clooney - finally received nominations after dozens
of films and many years in the business.
Three of the five Best Actor nominations were
characterizations of real-life persons, and four of the five
nominations were also for first-time nominees.
The winner in the Best Actor category was 38
year-old Philip Seymour Hoffman (with his first nomination)
as squeaky-voiced, effete, eccentric, mentally-deteriorating,
pop icon/biographer Truman Capote in Capote [Hoffman
had long been considered a perennial Oscar snub, for worthy
unnominated roles in Boogie Nights (1997), Happiness
(1998), Flawless (1999), Magnolia (1999), Almost
Famous (2000), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and Cold
Mountain (2003).] His strongest competition came for another
nominee portraying a gay/bisexual man: 26 year-old Heath Ledger
(with his first nomination), as Wyoming ranch hand Ennis Del
Mar who experienced an illicit affair with another cowboy in
the ill-fated love story of Brokeback Mountain.
The remaining three Best Actor nominees included:
- 36 year-old Terrence Howard (with his first
nomination, and the only nominee of color this year)
for his breakout role as DJay, a menacing pimp-turned-rapper
in Memphis, in the independently-produced Hustle & Flow (with
2 nominations, including a win for Best Song:
"It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp") (Some argued that
his performance should have been nominated in the supporting
category)
- 57 year-old David Strathairn (with his first
nomination) as crusading, unflappable television and radio
reporter Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck [Strathairn
had previously never been recognized - and overlooked for
his roles in Matewan (1987), Eight Men Out (1988), City
of Hope (1991) and L.A. Confidential (1997)]
- 31 year-old Joaquin Phoenix (with his second nomination,
with a previous supporting role nomination for Gladiator
(2000)) as black-clad, troubled country singer Johnny
Cash in Walk the Line
Three of the five Best Actress nominations were
for first-time nominees. The winner in the category was 29
year-old Reese Witherspoon (her first nomination) as June Carter,
a country-western singer who toured with and eventually married
fellow performer Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. [Note:
This marked the fifth time that both Best Actor and
Best Actress went to portrayals of real-life persons, and the
first time since 1980 (when Robert De Niro won as Jake La Motta
in Raging Bull (1980) and Sissy
Spacek won for her role as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's
Daughter (1980)).]
The other Best Actress nominees were:
- 71 year-old Judi Dench (with her fifth nomination),
the most honored acting nominee, as the title character Laura
Henderson, a war-time widow who transformed a run-down theater
into a flashy nude burlesque revue of showgirls, and battled
government censorship in WWII in director Stephen Frears' Mrs.
Henderson Presents (with two nominations, including Best
Costume Design) [Dench had two previous nominations for lead
roles in Mrs. Brown (1997) and Iris (2001),
and two nominations for supporting roles in Shakespeare
in Love (1998) - for which she won - and Chocolat
(2000)]
- 30 year-old Charlize Theron (with her second nomination,
after her win for her leading role in Monster (2003))
as single mother miner Josey Aimes (loosely based on Lois
Jenson) who successfully sued her mining company for sexual
harassment in North Country (with 2 nominations and
no wins)
- 43 year-old Desperate Housewives ABC-TV
sitcom star Felicity Huffman (with her first nomination)
in a gender-bending role as Bree, a pre-operative transgendered
woman (or male-to-female transsexual) (with the given name
of Stanley) who discovered (s)he had fathered a surly, drug-abusing
17-year-old gay hustler named Toby (Kevin Zegers) in the
low-budget, independent road film Transamerica (with
2 nominations, including Best Song)
- 20 year-old Keira Knightley (with her first
nomination) as eldest daughter Elizabeth Bennet who had an
affair with the older, cynical Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen)
in the classic Jane Austen tale of romantic comedy from director
Joe Wright, Pride & Prejudice (with 4 nominations
and no wins)
The winner in the Best Supporting Actor category
was 44 year-0ld George Clooney as over-the-hill CIA agent Bob
Barnes, who became a tortured hostage while investigating an
oil company conspiracy in Syriana (Clooney also received
a Best Director nomination and Best Screenwriting nomination
for Good Night, and Good Luck). Clooney was joined by
three other first-time nominees:
- 38 year-old Paul Giamatti, for his performance
as underdog James J. Braddock's (Russell Crowe) Depression-era
boxing trainer/corner man Joe Gould in Cinderella Man (with
3 nominations). [His nomination followed notable consecutive
snubs for his roles in American Splendor (2003) and Sideways
(2004) in the previous two years]
- 41 year-old Matt Dillon, as racist Officer
Ryan, who sexually assaulted a black woman (Thandie Newton)
in front of her husband (Terrence Howard) during a pat-down
in Crash
- 25 year-old Jake Gyllenhaal, as bisexual,
free-spirited married cowboy Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain (a
supporting nominee despite his lead role in the film, some
argued)
The remaining Best Supporting Actor nominee was
55 year-old, four-time nominee William Hurt, in a powerfully
unsettling, creepy 10-minute role as volatile mobster Richie
Cusack in A History of Violence (with 2 nominations,
including Best Screenplay Adaptation). [Hurt's prior three
nominations were all for lead roles, including a win for Kiss
of the Spider Woman (1985), and nominations for Children
of a Lesser God (1986) and Broadcast News (1987).]
The winner in the Best Supporting Actress category
was 34 year-old Rachel Weisz (with her first Oscar nomination
and win) as Tessa, the murdered wife of foreign diplomat Justin
Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), whose activism against a corrupt pharmaceutical
company in a poor Third World African country contributed to
her death, in Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' drama The
Constant Gardener (with 4 nominations). The other nominees
in the Best Supporting Actress category were:
- 26 year-old Amy Adams (with her first nomination),
as the free-spirited, pregnant North Carolinian high-schooler
Ashley, who became dazzled by her sophisticated and worldly
new sister-in-law, in director Phil Morrison's low-budget
independent film Junebug (the film's sole nomination)
- 25 year-old Michelle Williams (with her first
nomination) as Alma, an understanding young wife who becomes
lost and lonely after learning of her Wyoming ranch hand/husband
Ennis' (real-life boyfriend Heath Ledger) affair with another
cowboy, in Brokeback Mountain
- 45 year-old Catherine Keener (with her second nomination,
after her similar nod for Being John Malkovich (1999))
as To Kill a Mockingbird author
Nelle Harper Lee, Truman Capote's childhood friend and confidant,
in Capote
- 48 year-old Frances McDormand (with her fourth career
nomination) as Glory - another sexually-harassed coal miner
(stricken with Lou Gehrig's disease) in North Country [she
was previously nominated twice in a supporting role for Mississippi
Burning (1988) and Almost Famous (2000), and won
her sole lead nomination for Fargo
(1996)].
Robert Altman received a Lifetime Achievement
Oscar for his contributions to motion picture history. His
most obvious innovations including the use of multiple storylines
and characters, overlapping dialogue, and improvised original
performances from large ensemble casts. The iconoclastic 81
year-old writer/director/producer and seven-time Academy Award
nominee never won a competitive Oscar. He received five
directorial nominations for: the anarchic M*A*S*H (1970) (with
five nominations and one win for Best Adapted Screenplay), Nashville
(1975) (with five nominations and one win for Best
Song), The Player (1992) (with three nominations and
no wins), Short Cuts (1993) (with one nomination), and Gosford
Park (2001) (with seven nominations and one win for Best
Original Screenplay). He also directed such films as the acclaimed McCabe
& Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973) with
Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe, California Split (1974), 3
Women (1977), Popeye (1980), Come Back to the
Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982), Vincent & Theo
(1990), Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Kansas
City (1996), and Dr. T and the Women (2000). He
passed away less than a year after receiving the Honorary Oscar,
during the same year in which his final film was released, A
Prairie Home Companion (2006).
This year, composer John Williams earned his
incredible 44th and 45th Oscar nominations for
Best Original Score for Memoirs of a Geisha and Munich.
(He has a total of 40 nominations for Best Score, and five
nominations for Best Original Song.) It was also the eighth time
he'd been nominated twice in a single category (also in 1972,
1977, 1982, 1984, 1987, 1989, and 2001). He had "only"
previously won four Best Original Score Oscars for Jaws
(1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T.:
The Extraterrestrial (1982), and Schindler's
List (1993), and one Best Scoring: Adaptation and Original
Song Score Oscar for Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
Gary Demos received the honorary Gordon E. Sawyer
Award for his pioneering CGI work in such films as TRON
(1982) and The Last Starfighter (1984). He had won
three technical awards in 1984, 1994 and 1995 for his revolutionary
work in film.
Oscar Snubs and Omissions:
Contrary to form, George Lucas' sixth and final
installment of his galactic epics, that made more than $380
million at the box-office, Star
Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (with only
1 nomination, Best Makeup) did not receive an Oscar
nomination for Best Visual Effects. All five previous movies
either were recognized in the category or received a Special
Achievement Award for the work of his own high-tech company,
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).
The biggest omissions of the year overlooked
two legendary auteurs:
- Woody Allen had two 2005 releases that were
almost completely overlooked, including two major Best Actress
snubs:
(1) Melinda and Melinda (no nominations), featured Radha
Mitchell's dual-role as Melinda in two parallel stories (one
tragic, one comedic), as well as Will Ferrell's role in the
comic story as Hobie, a married man obsessed with Melinda,
and two actors in the tragic story: Chiwetel Ejiofor as Ellis
Moonsong, a jazz musician who dumped Melinda for one of her
best friends and Brooke Smith as Cassie, Melinda's straightforward,
realistic friend.
(2) Match Point (1 nomination only, for Allen's screenplay),
the December-released absorbing erotic thriller, with Scarlett
Johansson snubbed as femme fatale American actress Nola
Rice, as well as Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Irish tennis pro Chris
Wilson, involved in a destructive, tragic affair with Nola;
also with Emily Mortimer's supporting role as Chris' naive
upper-class wife Chloe Hewett
- Ingmar Bergman's Saraband (no nominations),
a sequel to his classic character study Scenes From a
Marriage (1973) with Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson,
with snubs for Best Picture, Best Director (Bergman), Best
Original Screenplay (Bergman), and the returning leads from
the first film portraying ex-spouses who met again after
30 years
Other films that failed to earn a Best Picture
and/or a Best Director nomination included:
- Rob Marshall's melodramatic Memoirs of
a Geisha (with 6 nominations and three wins for Best
Art Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Cinematography),
adapted from Arthur Golden's best-selling faux-autobiography
- James Mangold's autobiographical musical drama Walk
The Line (with 5 nominations including two major nominations
for its lead performers, and only one win for Best Actress)
- Joe Wright's polished adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride
& Prejudice (with 4 nominations, including Best Actress,
Best Original Score, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design
and no wins)
- Peter Jackson's King Kong (with 4 technical
nominations and three wins), a monumental remake of the original
classic adventure film King Kong
(1933)
- Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' political
thriller The Constant Gardener (with 4 nominations,
and one win for Best Supporting Actress)
- Ron Howard's inspirational boxing story Cinderella
Man (with 3 nominations and no wins)
- Craig Brewer's Hustle & Flow (with
2 nominations and one win for Best Original Song)
- David Cronenberg's incisive A History of
Violence (with 2 nominations and no wins)
- Terrence Malick's sprawling historical epic The
New World (with only 1 nomination, for Best Cinematography)
- Sam Mendes' even-handed Gulf War movie Jarhead (with
no nominations), similar in structure to Stanley Kubrick's Full
Metal Jacket (1987)
- Danish director Lars von Trier's Manderlay,
his follow-up film to his own Dogville (2003)
- Ridley Scott's historical epic Kingdom
of Heaven (with no nominations), set during the Crusades
- David Dobkin's block-buster R-rated comedy Wedding
Crashers (with no nominations)
Acting Omissions:
- Russell Crowe lacked a Best Actor nomination
for his role as lower-class, come-back heavyweight boxing
champion James J. Braddock in Cinderella Man
- Ralph Fiennes, likewise, was overlooked for
his performance as soft-spoken British diplomat Justin Quayle,
who investigated his wife's secret past in The Constant
Gardener
- Taraji P. Henson lacked a supporting nomination
as one of DJay's prostitutes, Shug, in Hustle & Flow
- Donald Sutherland has often been snubbed by
Oscar - this time for his supporting role as family patriarch
Mr. Bennett in Pride
& Prejudice
- Nicolas Cage was denied nominations for roles
as self-doubting arms dealer Yuri Orlov in Lord of War (with
no nominations), and as conflicted meteorologist David Spritz
in Gore Verbinski's The Weather Man (with no nominations)
- Catherine Keener, nominated for Capote,
could also have been nominated for her supporting role as
Trish, a mall shop owner and the love interest of the titular
character in the gross-out comedy The 40 Year Old Virgin (with
no nominations)
- Brokeback Mountain's Heath Ledger could
have been nominated for his supporting role as substance
abusing, self-destructive skateboarder Skip Engblom in Lords
of Dogtown (with no nominations), based on Stacy Peralta's
autobiographical documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys
(2001)), while co-star Jake Gyllenhaal could have been
nominated for his lead role as Marine sniper Anthony Swofford
in Jarhead
- Anne Hathaway was overlooked as rodeo queen
Lureen Newsome, wife of Jake Gyllenhaal's sexually-confused
Jack, in Brokeback Mountain
- George Clooney, nominated and winning for
his supporting role in Syriana, should have been nominated
for his role as Murrow's supportive producer Fred Friendly
in Good Night, and Good Luck; and Frank Langella was
neglected for his role as concerned CBS founder William Paley
- Ed Harris went unnominated for his chilling,
villainous role as mobster Carl Fogarty in A History of
Violence, as was Maria Bello as lawyer wife Edie Stall
Other worthy performances included:
- Johnny Depp as the famed, mischievous chocolatier
Willy Wonka in Tim Burton's remake Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory (with 1 nomination for Best Costume Design)
- Orlando Bloom as Balian, a widower knight
during the Crusades, in Kingdom of Heaven
- Claire Danes as the titular character Mirabelle
in Shopgirl (with no nominations)
- Naomi Watts as "the Beauty" Ann
Darrow in Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong
- Tilda Swinton as the frosty villainess White
Witch in The Chronicles
of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
- Q'orianka Kilcher in her breakthrough debut
film (15 years old) as the young teenaged Pocahontas in The
New World
- Cillian Murphy as two creepy villains: Dr.
Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow in Batman
Begins (with 1 nomination for Best Cinematography),
and as a devilish assassin, ominously named Jackson Rippner
in Wes Craven's suspense thriller Red Eye (with no
nominations); also Rachel McAdams as his seatmate victim
Lisa Reisert
- Presley Chweneyagae as the titular protagonist
who takes care of the 3 month-old child of his carjacking
victim in the widely acclaimed Best Foreign Language film
winner from South Africa, Tsotsi
- Chiwetel Ejiofor in a breakout role (Golden
Globe Best Actor-nominated) as drag queen Lola in Kinky
Boots
Un-nominated Documentary and Best Animated
Feature Films:
- the ribald, profanity-rich documentary The
Aristocrats, featuring dozens of famous stand-up comedians
refashioning the world's dirtiest joke about a family circus
act (the similar punchline always being: "What do
you call yourselves?" "The Aristocrats")
- the first NC-17 rated studio release
documentary Inside
Deep Throat, about the making of the infamous hard-core
adult film Deep Throat (1972), starring Linda Lovelace
- Hoodwinked, a hip, manic and clever Rashomon
(1950)-inspired (by Akira Kurosawa) CGI-animated satire
of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood
- other
worthy CGI films included: PDI/DreamWorks' Madagascar,
Blue Sky/20th Century Fox's Robots, and Disney's first in-house
fully-CGI film Chicken Little
|