Posted on 02/19/2006 8:49:05 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
Gay cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain took four awards including best picture today at the British Academy Film Awards, a result that may presage the Oscars in two weeks' time.
But the movie's Australian star Heath Ledger, again missed out on the best-actor prize to by Philip Seymour Hoffman for his depiction of troubled writer Truman Capote in Capote.
Brokeback Mountain beat a strong best-picture shortlist that included literary biopic Capote, LA story Crash, 1950s drama Good Night, and Good Luck and British favourite The Constant Gardener.
The Constant Gardener, a spy thriller and love story that went into the ceremony with 10 nominations, took only one award, for editing.
Memoirs of a Geisha won three awards, for cinematography, music and costume design.
Ang Lee was named best director for Brokeback, which is up for eight Academy Awards on March 5.
Jake Gyllenhaal won the best supporting actor prize for playing Jack Twist, one of two cowpokes who fall in love over the course of a Wyoming summer.
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who adapted Annie Proulx's short story, won the adapted screenplay prize.
Reese Witherspoon was named best actress for playing June Carter Cash, wife and muse of country great Johnny Cash, in Walk the Line.
Thandie Newton took the best supporting actress award for Crash, an edgy depiction of racial divisions in modern-day Los Angeles. The film, which had nine nominations, also won the prize for best original screenplay.
A host of stars brought Hollywood glitz to rainy London as they walked a sodden red carpet in Leicester Square before the ceremony.
George Clooney, Charlize Theron, Desperate Housewives' Felicity Huffman, The O.C.'s Mischa Barton and Crash star Matt Dillon were among the performers cheered by hundreds of fans huddled under ponchos and umbrellas against the downpour.
Clay-animation romp Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was named best British film, beating nominees including The Constant Gardener and Pride and Prejudice.
Pride and Prejudice director Joe Wright won the award for best first-time writer, producer of director.
De Battre Mon Coeur S'est Arrete (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) - an acclaimed French film about a man torn between a love of music and a life of crime - was named best film not in the English language.
Clooney went home empty-handed despite three nominations, as director for his study of repressive 1950s anti-Communism, Good Night, and Good Luck, and as supporting actor for that film and for political thriller Syriana.
But he said he was pleased that political cinema was undergoing a renaissance.
"In our country we hadn't talked about politics or anything interesting since Watergate," he said on the red carpet.
"Now you go to a coffee shop and people are talking about politics. It's good."
Poofters at the BAFTAs. Nothing new there...
Note to Monseiur Ledger. Playing a gay gets you lots of awards since we know hollywierd and its overseas brethern are totally gay. However, you did not play a part which incorporates gayness with loserdom. That would be capote. so you lose, hahahahahah.
As to the British awards, why would anyone be surprised at this, Britain has the largest percentage of gays in any nation on earth according to a poll recently done.
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