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| Berlin
Wins Oscar (Berlin, February 12) The Oscars invaded
Berlin today, giving newly-minted festival director Dieter Kosslick a boost with
rank-and-file German moviegoers and accredited guests as well in the midst of
his first, pivotal year at the helm. Gosford Park,
Monster’s Ball, The Royal Tenenbaums and Iris are having their European
premieres here in the high-profile competition section of the festival, with A
Beautiful Mind being presented in the section but out of competition. That’s some twenty Oscars nominations total
here in Berlin, and that’s not all: Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly have
been here for a few days doing rounds of press interviews and public appearances
on behalf of A Beautiful Mind. They’re following Robert Altman and
Maggie Smith, who did the same thing a few days ago for Gosford Park --
perhaps the hottest ticket in town this year thus far. Halle Berry showed up to publicize Monster’s
Ball (much to her embarrassment, her sex scene in the film is apparently
longer in the European cut than in the American version), and director Terry
Gilliam presented what must be the first production documentary about a movie
that hasn’t been made, Lost In La Mancha, about his aborted version of Man
Of La Mancha starring Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort. Wes Anderson will
present The Royal Tenenbaums to what may the film’s toughest crowd yet,
and on top of everything, Amelie producer Claudie Ossard is on the
international jury. At press time, nobody’s sure if Kate Winslet is actually
coming to present Iris or not. Those attending who weren’t nominated for
anything include Kevin Spacey (here on behalf of The Shipping News and a
charming documentary he’s produced called Uncle Frank), Cate Blanchett
(The Shipping News and Tom Tykwer’s opening night film Heaven)
Donald Sutherland (he’s the star of a Chinese comedy called Big Shot’s
Funeral), Faye Dunaway (who has directed a short film called The Yellow
Bird) and Catherine Deneuve (part of the large press conference for Francois
Ozon’s 8 Femmes, already a box office smash in France and subject of
among the few actual bidding wars on the market side of the festival). Meanwhile, both here and stateside, the Oscar
nominations are receiving more than the usual amount of grousing. Peter
Jackson’s big-budget adaptation The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The
Rings (LOR 1) leads the pack with thirteen nominations -- most of them
technical -- followed by A Beautiful Mind and Moulin Rouge
(another surprise) with eight each. At this point the award seems A Beautiful
Mind’s to lose, particularly since Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down didn’t
make the best picture cut. As usually happens with Oscar balloting, there were
maddening inconsistencies here: Scott picked up a Best Director nod for a film
not nominated, while Baz Luhrmann, whose Moulin Rouge is up for Best
Picture, didn’t get a directing nod. So, too, Todd Field’s In The Bedroom
is among the final five, while his Best Director slot went to David Lynch,
whose Mulholland Drive also didn’t make the Best Picture cut. There were few surprises, pleasant or
unpleasant, in the acting categories. Tom Wilkinson grabbed a much-deserved nod
for leading actor in In The Bedroom, while Sean Penn’s presence for I
Am Sam did raise a few eyebrows -- along with Will Smith’s nomination for Ali,
which performed poorly. This is also the first year two African-American actors
have been nominated for Best Actor: Smith and Denzel Washington for Training
Day. Russell Crowe’s nod for A Beautiful Mind was expected, and
chances are he’ll pick up his second Oscar in a row at the ceremony. The Best Actress category went according to
most prognostications, although the expected nod to Tilda Swinton for the
intense but little-seen The Deep End went instead to Renee Zellweger for
the bubbly and ubiquitous Bridget Jones’s Diary. At the moment the race
seems to even to call, with Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball), Judi Dench (Iris),
Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge), and Sissy Spacek (In The Bedroom,
and the most overhyped nominee to date this race) Nobody can figure out how Ethan Hawke got a
Best Supporting Actor nod for Training Day. Some had hoped that slot
would go to Joe Pantoliano for Memento, Steve Buscemi for Ghost World or
a raft of other possible choices. Pretty much everybody expected the category to
include Jim Broadbent (Iris), Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast), Ian
McKellen (LOR 1) and Jon Voight (unrecognizable as Howard Cosell in Ali).
Kingsley should get it. Now to those left out: many expected
Christopher Nolan’s Memento to be a dark horse choice for Best Picture,
Best Director and Best Actor (Guy Pearce) nominations, yet it received only two,
for Nolan’s brilliant script and Dody Dorn’s equally dazzling editing. Billy
Bob Thornton should’ve been nominated for either The Man Who Wasn’t There
or Monster’s Ball, and all that money DreamWorks spent to promote Shrek
outside the newly-minted Best Animated Feature award went to waste, as Monsters,
Inc. actually received more nominations; the third animated feature in the
category is Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. And where are nods beyond its
script for The Royal Tenenbaums, love it or hate it, one of the most
original films of the year? While most technical awards are expected at
this point to go to The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Rings, the
Best Cinematography statue rightly belongs to Roger Deakins for his work on The
Man Who Wasn’t There. With fifty-one submissions, the largest field
in memory, the Best Foreign Film Oscar is still expected to go to the French
Miramax release Amelie, although there was much merriment at the
Scandinavian market stand when Petter Ness’ Elling bested such
anticipated nominees as Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (Austria),
Walter Salles Behind The Sun (Brazil), Barbet Schroeder’s Our Lady
Of The Assassins (Colombia), Jan Sverak’s Dark Blue World (the
Czech Republic), Lone Scherfig’s Italian For Beginners (Denmark) Majid
Majidi’s Baran (Iran), Nanni Moretti’s The Son’s Room (Italy)
and Jean-Luc Godard’s In Praise Of Love (Switzerland) for the fifth
spot. The other four nominees are Lagaan (from India, and actually now
available stateside as a Columbia-TriStar Home Entertainment DVD), No Man’s
Land (Bosnia & Herzegovina) and another dark horse, Juan Jose
Campanella’s charming Argentine comedy The Son Of The Bride. The Academy Awards will be presented March 24 in Hollywood -- although at this point, might as well just move the whole thing to Berlin, as many of the nominees are here already… Performance by an actor – a leading role
Performance by an actor – a supporting
role
Performance by an actress – a leading role
Performance by an actress – a supporting
role
Best animated feature film of the year
Achievement – art direction
Achievement – cinematography
Achievement – costume design
Achievement – directing
Best documentary feature
Best documentary short subject
Achievement – film editing
Best foreign language film of the year
Achievement – makeup
Achievement – music – connection with
motion pictures (Original score)
Achievement – music – connection with
motion pictures (Original song)
Best motion picture of the year
Best animated short film
Best live action short film
Achievement – sound
Achievement – sound editing
Achievement – visual effects
Screenplay based on material previously
produced or published
Screenplay written directly for the screen
Be sure to read our reports from these other film festivals as well: |
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