WITH the announcement of the Academy Award nominations due next Tuesday afternoon, Brokeback Mountain is now even further ahead of all the other contenders, having won the Producers Guild of America award this week.
Many of the 2,700 Guild members are also Academy voters, and in 11 of the past 16 years, the PGA winner has gone on to win the Oscar for best picture. An exception was last year, when the PGA voters opted for The Aviator and the Oscar went to Million Dollar Baby.
Clonakility-based English screenwriter Jeffrey Caine seems assured of a screenplay Oscar nomination for his adaptation of John Le Carré's The Constant Gardener, which has already secured him nominations from Bafta and the Writers Guild of America. (Caine also scripted Damien O'Donnell's Inside I'm Dancing.)
The number of feature films deemed eligible for this year's Oscars is, at 311, the highest in 32 years, and marks a 16.5 per cent increase on last year's figure. This can be explained partly by the increased number of documentaries going on cinema release in the US, up from 15 in 2004 to 35 last year. Among the 15 documentaries shortlisted for the final five nominations are Murderball, Mad Hot Ballroom, March of the Penguins, Rize, The Devil and Daniel Johnson and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Meanwhile, 42 compositions have been deemed eligible for the best original song Oscar, and the truly eclectic line-up includes Do the Hippogriff from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; I'll Whip Ya Head Boy from Get Rich or Die Tryin'; Shoulder to Shoulder from Pooh's Heffalump Movie; So Long and Thanks for All the Fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; and no less than three songs from Todd Solondz's Palindromes.Black gold for Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis is set to play a Texas oil prospector at the turn of the 20th century in There Will Be Blood, the next film from Magnolia director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose screenplay is loosely based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! Miramax and Paramount's speciality films division are co-financing the movie, which has a budget of over $25 million and is due to shoot in May in Texas and New Mexico.
Busy busy busy
Speak of the devil. No offence intended to Michael Winterbottom with that satanic reference, but just days after reviewing A Cock and Bull Story in last Friday's Ticket and noting that it is his 13th feature film in 10 years, I learned that he will have yet another movie completed in time for its world premiere at next month's Berlin Film Festival.
The Road to Guantanamo is based on the experiences of the so-called Tipton Three, young British Muslims who were incarcerated at the Camp X-Ray prison in Guantanamo Bay for two years as "enemy combatants". Based on extensive testimony from the three men, Winterbottom's film is a docu-drama that blends interview footage, archive material and dramatic recreations of events. It was shot in Iran (where Camp X-Ray was recreated), Afghanistan, Pakistan and England.
Da Vinci goes to Cannes
The Berlin festival organisers, who have been releasing details of their 2006 programme over the past few weeks, will not be pleased with arch-rival Cannes for stealing some of their thunder and announcing that The Da Vinci Code will have its world premiere on opening night at Cannes on May 17th. It will be released in France on the same day and across the world two days later. Directed by Ron Howard, it stars Tim Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Jean Reno, Ian McKellen, Paul Bettany and Alfred Molina. Wong Kar-wai will chair this year's Cannes jury.
Meanwhile, Berlin opens on February 9th with the world premiere of Snow Cake, starring Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman. The programme includes Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion, Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep, Claude Chabrol's Comedy of Power, Terrence Malick's The New World, Bennett Miller's Capote, Stephen Gaghan's Syriana, and Oskar Roehler's The Elementary Particles. The latter is adapted from Ireland-based writer Michel Houelellebecq's controversial novel Atomised. Charlotte Rampling chairs the Berlin jury.
