Mel Gibson’s costly three-hour Scottish epic, “Braveheart,” led with 10 Oscar nominations Tuesday morning as the 68th Academy Awards officially got under way in Los Angeles.
Ron Howard’s fact-based space drama, “Apollo 13,” received nine nominations. Ang Lee’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” and Chris Noonan’s G-rated talking-pig fantasy, “Babe,” collected seven each. Yet neither Lee nor Howard was nominated for best director, and “Braveheart” received no acting nominations.
All four movies are in the running for best picture of 1995, along with Michael Radford’s Italian-language drama about a friendship between a poet and postman, “The Postman” (“Il Postino”). This marks the first time since Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers” (1973) that a foreign-language film is in the running for best picture of the year. “The Postman” was also nominated for best director, screenplay and actor (the late Massimo Troisi, who also worked on the screenplay).
Gibson and Noonan were also nominated for best director. Lee and Howard were replaced on the director’s list by Mike Figgis (“Leaving Las Vegas”) and Tim Robbins (“Dead Man Walking”), whose films were not nominated for best picture.
For performing double duty as actress-writer on “Sense and Sensibility,” Emma Thompson became the first woman in academy history to be nominated for best actress and best screenplay (adaptation). Orson Welles, Warren Beatty, Charles Chaplin and Woody Allen have previously been nominated as best actor and best screenplay; the Troisi name joins theirs this year.
Thompson’s performance as the most level-headed of three sisters in Austen’s tale will compete with Sharon Stone’s faithless wife in “Casino,” Susan Sarandon’s plain-speaking nun in “Dead Man Walking,” Meryl Streep’s frustrated housewife in “The Bridges of Madison County” and Elisabeth Shue as the prostitute who chooses to watch her lover drink himself to death in “Leaving Las Vegas.”
As the suicidal lover in that film, Nicolas Cage was nominated for best actor. Already the winner of most year-end critics’ awards for his performance, he will compete with Anthony Hopkins’ impersonation of Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon,” Sean Penn’s condemned criminal in “Dead Man Walking,” Richard Dreyfuss’ reluctant music teacher in “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and the late Troisi as the mailman in “The Postman.”
Joan Allen’s performance as Pat Nixon in “Nixon,” recently cited by the Screen Actors Guild as leading-role work, was nominated by academy voters in the supporting category.
Allen’s competition includes Mare Winningham in the title role as a singer in “Georgia,” Kathleen Quinlan as an astronaut’s worried wife in “Apollo 13,” Mira Sorvino as an unexpectedly charming New York prostitute in “Mighty Aphrodite” and Kate Winslet as Thompson’s swooning sister in “Sense and Sensibility.”
For best supporting actor, the academy nominated Ed Harris as a resourceful NASA official in “Apollo 13,” Tim Roth for his work as a dangerous fop in “Rob Roy,” Kevin Spacey as the mystery man of “The Usual Suspects,” Brad Pitt as a mental patient in “12 Monkeys” and James Cromwell as the farmer who befriends the pig in “Babe.”
Notable among the missing names: Nicole Kidman in “To Die For,” John Travolta in “Get Shorty,” Don Cheadle in “Devil in a Blue Dress” and Jennifer Jason Leigh in “Georgia.” All have recently won critics’ awards for their work. “Casino,” “The American President” and “The Bridges of Madison County,” all considered Oscar front-runners at one point, received only one nomination each.
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The nominations for best original screenplay include “Braveheart,” “Mighty Aphrodite,” “Nixon,” “Toy Story” and “The Usual Suspects.” In addition to Thompson’s nomination for “Sense and Sensibility,” the competition for best adapted screenplay includes “Apollo 13,” “Babe,” “Leaving Las Vegas” and “The Postman.”
For best song, the hugely popular “Colors of the Wind,” from Disney’s “Pocahontas,” may be hard to beat. The other nominees: Bruce Springsteen’s “Dead Man Walking,” Randy Newman’s “You’ve Got a Friend” (from “Toy Story”) and two forgottable fillers: “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman” (from “Don Juan De Marco”) and “Moonlight” (from “Sabrina”).
The nominees for best foreign-language film include Marleen Gorris’ “Antonia’s Line” (Holland), Rachid Bochareb’s “Dust of Life” (Algeria), Bo Widerberg’s “All Things Fair” (Sweden), Fabio Barreto’s “O Quatrilho” (Brazil) and Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Star Maker” (Italy).
The documentary category includes two films already shown on television (“Anne Frank Remembered,” “The Battle Over `Citizen Kane’ “), an IMAX movie (“The Living Sea”) and a double winner at last month’s Sundance Film Festival (“Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern”).
Honorary Oscars will go to Kirk Douglas, Chuck Jones and John Lasseter, who directed “Toy Story.” The awards will be presented March 25 on ABC-TV.