Predicting the 74th
Oscar Nominations
by
Ian Waldron-Mantgani, February 10, 2002
The nominations for the 74th Academy Awards will
be announced on Tuesday afternoon by Marcia Gay Harden, who won the prize
for Best Supporting Actress at last year's ceremony. The film for which she
won, "Pollock", has still not opened in the UK, but hey, that's a rant for
another time.
Universally expected to feature in the Best Picture
category are "Moulin Rouge!", the flamboyant Baz Luhrmann musical that became
Oscar favourite as soon as it opened; "A Beautiful Mind", based on Sylvia
Nasar's book about schizophrenic mathematical genius John Nash; and "Lord
of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings", the Peter Jackson adaptation
of the classic Tolkien novel.
The above three movies have been mentioned in
almost every set of award nominations this season, including the Golden Globes
and BAFTAS. It's harder to predict what will feature in the two other spots;
"Gosford Park" and "Shrek" have been doing pretty well in the precursors,
but the former is directed by Robert Altman, who has gone without a Best
Picture nomination for sixteen years, and the latter is a cartoon -- a type
of film that this year has its very own category, Best Animated
Feature.
If either "Gosford Park" or "Shrek" are not nominated
for Best Picture, then expect to see Todd Field's critical smash "In the
Bedroom" on the list, or even "Memento", the cleverly confusing thriller
by Christopher Nolan that had a scattered release across the UK in the year
2000 and went on to do great business as a video release. "Amelie" was considered
to have a lock on a nomination a few months ago, but buzz seems to have faded.
Longshots include "Black Hawk Down", "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "Harry Potter",
which deserves a nomination but may be overshadowed by "Lord of the
Rings".
In the Best Actor category, we will probably see
Russell Crowe receive a nomination for "A Beautiful Mind", Denzel Washington
for "Training Day", Tom Wilkinson for "Iris" (or "In the Bedroom") and Gene
Hackman for his performance in the oddball comedy "The Royal Tennenbaums".
Others in with a chance include Billy Bob Thornton in "The Man Who Wasn't
There", Guy Pearce in "Memento", Ewan McGregor in "Moulin Rouge!", or maybe
even Sean Penn in "I Am Sam" or Will Smith in "Ali".
Sissy Spacek will feature in the Best Actress
category for "In the Bedroom", joined by Nicole Kidman in "Moulin Rouge!".
There's also buzz around Halle Berry in the independent drama "Monster's
Ball", and hopefully voters will remember Renee Zellweger's wonderful work
in "Bridget Jones's Diary". Also in with a shout are Judi Dench in "Iris"
and Naomi Watts in "Mulholland Drive". Nicole Kidman might get a second
nomination for "The Others", but I doubt she will and hope she doesn't. Buzz
around Tilda Swinton in "The Deep End" has faded, and she failed to be nominated
by either the Screen Actors Guild or Golden Globes.
One quick note about the Supporting Actress race
-- I'm perturbed by the lack of talk about Scarlett Johansson in "Ghost World",
who exuded star quality without drawing attention to herself and gave the
best performance of last year.... and yet I'm comforted by the knowledge
that goddess Jennifer Connelly will be nominated for "A Beautiful
Mind".
The nominations will be announced at 5.30am Pacific
on the 12th February, which translates as 1.30pm our time.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
Commentary
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)