IT WAS nail biting time in Hollywood yesterday as the film industry waited for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to announce the Oscar nominations.
Today's announcements at 1.30 p.m. (Irish time) follow months of lobbying of academy members by studios looking for the extra kudos and cash a nomination can bring. High among the hopefuls is United Artists, looking for at least five nominations for its film, Leading Las Vegas.
Sony is also hoping the academy will look kindly on its main contender, Sense and Sensibility, which has the potential for a unique double with Emma Thompson as a possible nominee in the best actress and best adapted screenplay categories.
Meanwhile, entertainment advertising pages of major newspapers were being kept open for tomorrow so that studios can change their ads to trumpet the Oscar nominations in bold headlines.
United Artists is looking for nominations for best actor for Nicholas Cage, best actress for Elizabeth Shue, best director and best adapted screenplay for Mike Figgis and best picture for Figgis's darkly haunting Leading Las Vegas which tells the story of a failed Hollywood screen writer determined to drink himself to death in the company of a prostitute, played by Shue.
The morose tale, with no uplifting sentiments or high moral ground, seems an unlikely contender but it has received several awards from film critics' groups and has been nominated for awards by the Screen Actors' Guild, the Directors' Guild and the Writers' Guild.
Sense and Sensibility, which Thompson adapted from Jane Austen's romantic novel about two sisters in search of love, took the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe for best picture and Thompson won for best screenplay. The film has also been honoured by film critics' associations.
The most unlikely nomination for best picture could well be Babe, the low budget barnyard film from Australia about a talking pig who refuses to accept his porcine identity and thinks he is a sheep dog. Other possible nominees for best picture include Apollo 13, Braveheart, The Bridges of Madison County, The American President and Get Shorty.