Scorsese epic flies high

The Aviator brings the esteemed director his fifth nomination

Martin Scorsese's epic The Aviator flew high at the Academy, adding no fewer than 11 nominations to its prestigious statuettes. The biopic on Howard Hughes is the obvious favourite; in addition to the nomination for Best Picture, The Aviator has brought Scorsese his fifth nomination as Best Director (which he's never won before), while three of his actors are running for Best Actor awards: Leonardo DiCaprio as Lead Actor, and Alan Alda and Cate Blanchett as Supporting Actor and Actress. Italy's Dante Ferretti, Art Director of the movie, has been nominated, as well as his wife, Francesca Lo Schiavo, Set Decorator.
The Italian candidate for Best Foreign Language Film, Gianni Amelio's The House Keys, did not make it to the final five, which include Spain's The Sea Inside and France's The Chorus.
Canada is Oscar-bound this year, thanks mainly to a pair of short films co-produced by the National Film Board.
Ryan is writer-director Chris Landreth's innovative use of digital animation to look at the career and tragic decline of Ryan Larkin, himself a former NFB animator who, after bouts with cocaine and alcohol, ended up a panhandler on the streets of Montreal.
Ryan has already won more than 30 international awards, from Cannes to Canada.
Speaking from Park City, Utah, where he's attending the Sundance film festival, Landreth said the news Tuesday morning was probably the most important development yet for his much-lauded film.
Landreth was also nominated in the animated short category in 1996 for The End.
Hardwood, written and directed by Hubert Davis, was nominated in the documentary short category. Making his directorial debut, Vancouver native Davis, son of former Harlem Globetrotter Mel Davis, uses interviews as well as archival and home movies to explore his father's relationship with his family.
Davis's documentary looks at his father, a Globetrotter for 18 years during the 1960s and '70s. "I just felt ... his life story was pretty amazing, growing up in the slums of Chicago and then escaping to travel the world with basketball," he explained. "It then just developed more into a story about family and the choices that my dad made in life and how that affected my family."
The elder Davis married a Vancouver woman and moved the family to Canada, where they still reside.
Another Canadian connection to Oscar in 2005 is the Robert Lantos-produced Being Julia, for which Annette Bening nabbed a best actress nod. Also, Paul Haggis of London, Ont., made it into the best adapted screenplay category for his script for Million Dollar Baby.
"Oscar recognition is the highest honour in our industry," said Lantos. "For an independent Canadian film it is particularly gratifying.'"
Hardwood was produced originally for TVOntario, the provincial education broadcaster, and the film has been sold already to PBS to air on Point of View. But, Davis explained, his film cannot be telecast until after the Academy Award ceremonies, because that would void eligibility in its category.
Martin Scorsese may finally be positioned for Academy Awards glory, but his Howard Hughes epic, The Aviator, will have to duke it out with Clint Eastwood's boxing drama.
The best-picture and director honours are shaping up as a two-film race between Scorsese's and Eastwood's flicks, with The Aviator having the inside track as front-runner by leading the pack with 11 nominations Tuesday.
The other best-picture contenders were Finding Neverland, a whimsical portrait of the creation of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan; Ray, a fiery film biography of Ray Charles; and Sideways, a quirky romance about the misadventures of two buddies on a wine-tasting road trip.
Scorsese could be the story come Oscar night Feb. 27. The filmmaker behind such modern classics as Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and GoodFellas has never delivered a best-picture winner, and Scorsese has never won a directing Oscar despite four previous nominations.
Along with his directing slot, Eastwood was nominated for best actor as a cantankerous boxing trainer in Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood previously had acting and directing nominations with 1992's Unforgiven, which won the best-picture and directing Oscars.
His acting nomination this time was a slight surprise, given that most previous Hollywood honours had singled out Eastwood for his direction on Million Dollar Baby, not for his performance.
Jamie Foxx landed dual nominations. Foxx is considered the favourite in the best-actor race for his dazzling emulation of Charles in Ray, and he also was picked in the supporting category for Collateral, in which he plays a cabdriver forced to drive a hitman on a killing spree.
Joining DiCaprio, Eastwood and Foxx in the best-actor race were Johnny Depp as playwright Barrie in Finding Neverland and Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda, starring as hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, who sheltered refugees from the Rwandan genocide.
The best-actress category presents a rematch of the 1999 showdown, when underdog Swank won the Oscar for Boys Don't Cry over Annette Bening, who had been the front-runner for American Beauty.
Along with Swank in Million Dollar Baby, Bening was nominated for Being Julia, in which she plays an aging 1930s stage diva exacting wickedly comic revenge on the men in her life and a young rival.
Toronto producer Robert Lantos was behind the film, which opened last year's Toronto International Film Festival.
Both actresses won Golden Globes; Swank for best dramatic actress, Bening for actress in a musical or comedy.
Also nominated for the best-actress Oscar: Catalina Sandino Moreno as a Colombian woman imperiled when she signs on to smuggle heroin in Maria Full of Grace; Imelda Staunton as a saintly housekeeper in 1950s Britain who performs illegal abortions on the side in Vera Drake; and Kate Winslet as a woman who has had memories of her ex-boyfriend erased in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Staunton, a veteran British actress not widely known to American audiences, said she hoped the Oscar attention would draw more viewers to Vera Drake, which so far has been in only narrow U.S. release.
Besides Eastwood and Scorsese, directing nominees were Taylor Hackford for Ray, Mike Leigh for Vera Drake and Alexander Payne for Sideways.
Along with Foxx in Collateral, supporting-actor nominees were Alan Alda, who was nominated for supporting actor as a senator tussling with Hughes in The Aviator; Morgan Freeman as a worldly, streetwise ex-boxer in Million Dollar Baby; Thomas Haden Church as a bridegroom out for a final fling in Sideways; and Clive Owen as a coarse lover in the sex drama Closer.
For supporting actress, academy voters picked Cate Blanchett, who plays Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator; Laura Linney as sex researcher Alfred Kinsey's carnally adventurous wife in Kinsey; Virginia Madsen as a deceived lover in Sideways; Sophie Okonedo as innkeeper Rusesabagina's wife in Hotel Rwanda; and Natalie Portman as a gutsy stripper in Closer.

Publication Date: 2005-01-30
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4870