Published: March 07, 2006
Global Talents Take Honors at 78th U.S. Film Industry Awards
By Michael J. Bandler, Washington File
Academy Awards recognize achievements from around the world
Filmmaking talent from around the globe convened in Los Angeles on March 5 to learn the results of America's pre-eminent movie competition - the Academy Awards, known as Oscars, presented by the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The envelopes with winners' names for the 78th annual event contained a number of names from abroad. Those names and the roster of nominees underscore the fact that the U.S. film industry - rather than being a monolith - actually is quite decentralized, with independently financed films a solid segment of the mix. Capote, a glimpse at an episode in the life of novelist-essayist Truman Capote, and Good Night, and Good Luck, a depiction of a critical moment in the career of television correspondent Edward R. Murrow, are two examples of relatively low-budget movies shaped outside the U.S. film studio system that found welcome audiences in 2005.
As for artists from overseas, on the list of winners was director Ang Lee, a native of Pingtung, Taiwan, honored for his craftsmanship at the helm of Brokeback Mountain, a study of the anguished connected lives of two Wyoming sheepherders.
Yet surprisingly to some, Lee's film - the putative front-runner - did not take "best motion picture" honors. That statuette went to Crash, an examination of the complexities of racial tolerance told through intersecting story lines in Los Angeles. Its director, Canadian-born Paul Haggis, took original screenplay honors with a co-author, Robert Moresco.
South African attorney-turned-filmmaker Gavin Hood received the award for best foreign film of 2005 for Tsotsi, a thriller based on an Athol Fugard novel about a Johannesburg gang leader who reassesses his life under dire circumstances.
The film year just past was one in which global settings played major parts in films by established American filmmakers. Woody Allen went to London for his first film shot overseas, Match Point. Rob Marshall, who won an Oscar in 2003 for Chicago, traveled to the Far East for his film adaptation of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. Director Peter Jackson, a who won the best direction Oscar for 2003 for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, shot segments of his 2005 remake of King Kong in his native New Zealand. The film won awards at the 2006 Oscar ceremonies for visual effects, sound editing and sound, with a number of foreign-born talents on Jackson's team taking home statuettes. Steven Spielberg's political thriller, Munich, was shot in several locations abroad, as were other popular films, including Syriana and The Constant Gardener.
His performance in Syriana gained best supporting actor honors for George Clooney, as a U.S. intelligence operative in the Middle East. And in the cast of Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' The Constant Gardener, British-born Rachel Weisz won the best supporting actress trophy for her role as a diplomat's wife pursuing a controversial agenda in Africa.
Oscar winners also were found among the men and women behind the cameras. Australian Dion Beebe won the cinematography award for his work shooting Memoirs of a Geisha. Pitted against fellow composers from Spain and Italy, as well as the oft-honored American musician John Williams, Argentina's Gustavo Santaolalla received the Oscar for his lush, evocative score for Brokeback Mountain. Martin McDonagh, British-born playwright-screenwriter of Irish parentage, gained "short film, live action" honors for writing and directing Six Shooter, an Irish comedy about a chance encounter on a train.
Two audience favorites of 2005 - created by talents from abroad - won Oscars. Director Nick Park, a previous Oscar winner for two animated shorts featuring an inventor named Wallace and his canine pal Gromit, joined with writer-director Steve Box to bring the fanciful duo back in a full-length feature, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It took the prize for best animated feature. In the documentary category, the winner was March of the Penguins, the imaginative creation of the French team of Luc Jacquet and Yves Darondeau.
Over the decades, the American movie industry has been dominated by the "majors" - studios such as Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Universal. As mergers and takeovers have brought these and other studios under corporate conglomerate umbrellas, boutique studios - Focus Features, Lions Gate Entertainment and Paramount Classics among them - have arisen within the larger parent groupings.
These smaller arms, and a vast number of homegrown companies that beg and borrow to amass the funds needed for production, have become more visible, and more potent, over the years. Nominees in the major categories this Oscar season, and several of the winners, were drawn from productions such as Capote, Junebug, The Squid and the Whale and Good Night, and Good Luck.
Following are the winners of Academy Awards for films released in 2005 in major categories:
Best Motion Picture, Crash;
Best Actor (leading role), Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote;
Best Actress (leading role), Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line;
Best Actor (supporting role), George Clooney, Syriana;
Best Actress (supporting role), Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener;
Best Director, Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain;
Best Original Screenplay, Paul Haggis, Robert Moresco, Crash;
Best Adapted Screenplay, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain;
Best Cinematography, Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha;
Best Foreign Language Film, Tsotsi, South Africa;
Best Documentary Feature, March of the Penguins;
Best Animated Feature: Wallace & Gromit in "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit"; and
Best Film Score: Gustavo Santaolalla, Brokeback Mountain.
A complete list of nominees and winners, past and present, is available on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Web site.
Source: U.S. Department of State
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