Wednesday, February 16, 2000
Oscar nominees hold surprises
BY MARGARET A. McGURK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Sean Penn got his due. So did Richard Farnsworth, Toni Collette and Samantha Morton.
All four received Oscar nominations Tuesday, though none ranked high on prognosticators' lists of likely honorees.
Mr. Farnsworth was nominated as best actor for his moving, understated work inthe David Lynch drama The Straight Story. Mr. Penn was cited for playing a heartless jazz musician in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown, in which Ms. Morton played his mute lover with arresting dignity. Ms. Collette drew raves as a troubled mother in The Sixth Sense.
Jim Carrey, meanwhile, will have to wait.
His eerie portrayal of the late Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon did not earn the nomination many expected.
His fans may take consolation hoping for another hilarious performance like the one Mr. Carrey gave as an Oscar presenter last year, bemoaning his lack of a nomination for The Truman Show.
After a year full of exceptional films, overall nominations were spread across the field. American Beauty took eight nominations. The Cider House Rules and The Insider received seven each. The Sixth Sense received six and The Talented Mr. Ripley,five.
With so much quality in contention, results in many categories differed from craft-guild award nominations — such as the Directors Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America awards — even though their members largely overlap with the Academy voters.
For example, best-director nominations went to four out of five guild nominees — Sam Mendes for American Beauty, Spike Jonze for Being John Malkovich, Michael Mann for The Insider and M. Night Shyamalan for The Sixth Sense.
However, Frank Darabont, a DGA nominee for The Green Mile, did not make the Oscar cut. Lasse Hallstrom was nominated for The Cider House Rules, but is absent from the DGA ballot. Both films are nominated for best picture.
The same pattern applied to original-screenplay nominations; four out of five went to Writers Guild of America nominees, but not David O. Russell for Three Kings. Instead, Mike Leigh was nominated for his Topsy-Turvy script.
Members from specific branches — directors, actors, cinematographers and so forth — nominate contenders in most of the 23 categories. Foreign-language and documentary nominees are selected by special panels. Final awards are chosen by the entire Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences membership of more than 5,300.
The top nominations were announced before dawn in Los Angeles by actor Dustin Hoffman, who was introduced by Academy president Robert Rehme, a former Cincinnatian.
The Oscars will be awarded on March 26 in a show hosted by Billy Crystal on ABC.
Complete list of Oscar nominations
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Oscar nominees hold surprises
Complete list of Oscar nominations
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