In the spirit of heavily trophied epics like Ben-Hur and Braveheart, Ridley Scott's sweeping swordplay story, Gladiator, towered above the Oscar competition Tuesday, scoring 12 nominations for the 73rd Annual Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Supporting Actor (Joaquin Phoenix) and Best Director (Scott).
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Also scoring big Tuesday was Ang Lee's martial-arts romance, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The critically hailed Taiwanese production picked up 10 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for Lee, in addition to Best Foreign-Language Film.
Crouching Tiger, like Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful two years before it, managed to score a major shot at Oscar glory without one word spoken in English. Its 10 nominations marked a record for a foreign-language film (topping Life Is Beautiful's seven nods), and it now becomes the seventh picture with subtitles to win a Best Picture nomination. Other top nominees Tuesday: Steven Soderbergh's ensemble drug thriller Traffic, Soderbergh's real-life hero tale Erin Brockovich and Lasse Hallström's sweet-tooth story Chocolat each picked up five nominations, including Best Picture.
THE TOP CONTENDERS
Movies
Oscar Noms
Gladiator
12
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
10
Chocolat
5
Erin Brockovich
5
Traffic
5
Crowe, meanwhile, picked up his second consecutive Best Actor nomination (after last year's nod for The Insider), this time for Gladiator. His competition: Golden Globe winner Tom Hanks for his weight-shedding lead role in Cast Away, Javier Bardem for his performance as Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls, Geoffrey Rush for his deliciously wicked take on the Marquis de Sade in Quills and one of the day's biggest surprises, Ed Harris for his role as artist Jackson Pollock in Pollock. (The little-seen film, just now spreading through theaters, also nabbed a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Marcia Gay Harden.)
Not so surprising were the nominees for Best Actress, as Golden Globe winner Julia Roberts scored a nod for her environmentally crusading role in Erin Brockovich. She'll face Joan Allen, for her work as a scandal-plagued politico in The Contender, Juliette Binoche for her sexy candymaker in Chocolat, Ellen Burstyn as the delusional pill-popper in Requiem for a Dream and Laura Linney for her performance as a single mother contending with her homeward-bound younger brother in You Can Count on Me.
In the supporting races, there were a few minor surprises, namely Harden for Pollock and Jeff Bridges (but not Gary Oldman) for The Contender.
For Best Supporting Actress, Harden will face both Kate Hudson for her rock groupie role and Frances McDormand for her turn as a doting mother in Cameron Crowe's rock nostalgia trip Almost Famous, Judi Dench as a hardened grandmother in Chocolat and Julie Walters as a ballet mentor in Billy Elliot.
Bridges was nominated for Best Supporting Actor alongside Phoenix for his evil turn in Gladiator (instead of Quills, as some speculated early on), Willem Dafoe as the bloodsucker-turned-thespian in Shadow of the Vampire, Benicio Del Toro for his work as an ethically torn Mexican cop in Traffic and Albert Finney as the litigating sidekick to Roberts in Erin Brockovich.
It also was another day of good news/bad news for Soderbergh: Good news because he was nominated twice for Best Director, for Traffic and Erin Brockovich, becoming the first dual nominee since Michael Curtiz pulled it off in 1938 for Four Daughters and Angels with Dirty Faces. (Between 1950 and 1974, the Academy didn't allow dual nominations.)
Soderbergh was nominated alongside Lee for Crouching Tiger, Stephen Daldry for Billy Elliot and Ridley Scott for Gladiator. The bad news, of course, is that some believe Soderbergh lost the Golden Globe for best director to Crouching Tiger's Lee because his votes were split among two nominations. And history isn't on Soderbergh's side either: Despite his two nods in '38, Curtiz lost to Frank Capra for You Can't Take It with You.
The day's biggest disses? Despite a last-minute Oscar push, Wonder Boys couldn't muster more than three nominations--Best Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing and Best Song (Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed"). And neither Wonder Boys nor Traffic managed to net Michael Douglas a nomination in the lead or supporting categories.
Others seemingly forgotten by the Academy included the Cuban missile crisis thriller Thirteen Days, Billy Elliot's toe-tapping young star Jamie Bell (passed over for Best Actor, though the film picked up three nods), Cast Away (which, aside from Hanks' nomination and a Best Sound nod, went nowhere) and the morose musical by Lars von Trier, Dancer in the Dark. Dancer's star, Icelandic pop pixie Björk, failed to nab a Best Actress nomination, but she is in the running for Best Original Song for the film's "I've Seen It All."
Overall, the Academy proved it still loves a good chest-thumping, bloody epic, as Gladiator's 12 nominations were just shy of the record of 14 held by 1950's All About Eve and 1997's Titanic. Six films, meanwhile, have collected 13 nominations and Gladiator joins 11 other films to have received 12 nominations.
This year's awards will be handed out March 25 from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and telecast on ABC. Comedian multihyphenate Steve Martin will handle the hosting duties.
Here's a quick look at the big races:
Best Picture: Chocolat Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Erin Brockovich Gladiator Traffic Best Actor: Russell Crowe (Gladiator) Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls) Tom Hanks (Cast Away) Ed Harris (Pollock) Geoffrey Rush (Quills) Best Actress: Joan Allen (The Contender) Juliette Binoche (Chocolat) Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream) Laura Linney (You Can Count on Me) Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) Best Supporting Actor: Jeff Bridges (The Contender) Willem Dafoe (Shadow of the Vampire) Benicio Del Toro (Traffic) Albert Finney (Erin Brockovich) Joaquin Phoenix (Gladiator) Best Supporting Actress: Judi Dench (Chocolat) Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock) Kate Hudson (Almost Famous) Frances McDormand (Almost Famous) Julie Walters (Billy Elliot) Best Director: Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot) Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich) Ridley Scott (Gladiator) Steven Soderbergh (Traffic) Best Original Screenplay: Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous Lee Hall, Billy Elliot Susannah Grant, Erin Brockovich David Franzoni, John Logan and William Nicholson, Gladiator Kenneth Lonergan, You Can Count on Me Best Adapted Screenplay: Robert Nelson Jacobs, Chocolat Wang Hui Ling, James Schamus and Tsai Kuo Jung, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Stephen Gaghan, Traffic Steve Kloves, Wonder Boys Best Foreign-Language Film: Amores Perros (Mexico) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Taiwan) Divided We Fall (Czech Republic) Everybody Famous (Belgium) The Taste of Others (France)
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