Brokeback Mountain expected to lead Oscar nominations

Gay cowboys, country singers, literary lions, a bullheaded CIA agent and a transsexual on a road trip are among the likely cast of characters for Academy Awards nominations today.

Brokeback Mountain, a tale of two cowboys swept up in a tragic love affair, seemed poised for front-runner status in the best-picture race and was a virtual shoo-in to grab nominations for lead actor Heath Ledger and director Ang Lee, with co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams holding strong prospects for supporting acting.

Joaquin Phoenix as country-music legend Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as his stage companion and future wife, June Carter, also were expected to land in the lead-acting categories for Walk the Line, another probable best-picture nominee.

The other three best-picture slots were up for grabs among a diverse assortment of films, including the ensemble drama Crash, the Edward Murrow tale Good Night, and Good Luck, the murder thriller The Constant Gardener, the oil-industry saga Syriana, the assassination story Munich and the costume pageants Memoirs of a Geisha and Pride & Prejudice.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is considered the best-actor favourite for Capote, in which he offers a remarkable emulation of In Cold Blood author Truman Capote’s vain, effete mannerisms. Co-star Catherine Keener – who plays Capote’s friend Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird – is in the mix for supporting actress.

Other contenders for key nominations included George Clooney for supporting actor as a tenacious CIA operative in Syriana; Felicity Huffman for best actress as a man on an unexpected road trip preceding sex-change surgery to become a woman in Transamerica; Ziyi Zhang for best actress as a belle of Japan in Memoirs of a Geisha; Rachel Weisz for supporting actress as a humanitarian-aid worker in The Constant Gardener; and David Strathairn for best actor as newsman Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck.

Brokeback Mountain has earned top honours from many earlier Hollywood awards, among them the Golden Globes, the Directors Guild of America and key critics groups. A best-picture win would make it the first film with explicit homosexual themes to claim the grand prize at the Oscars.

The Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday threw up a potential roadblock for Brokeback Mountain, which was shut out for the ceremony’s five acting awards. Brokeback Mountain had been viewed as a likely winner of the guild’s award for overall cast performance, a prize that went to Crash instead.

But while the cast award is the guild’s equivalent of a best-picture honour, six of the previous 10 SAG winners failed to take the top prize come Oscar night, including Sideways last year.

Oscar nominees in most categories are chosen by specific branches of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, such as directors, actors and writers. The full academy membership of about 5,800 is eligible to vote in all categories for the Oscars themselves.

The Oscars is being held at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre on March 5. The host for the event is Jon Stewart.

Filmmaker Robert Altman, who has been nominated five times for best director but has never won, will receive an honorary Oscar for a career that includes such films as M-A-S-H, Nashville, The Player and Gosford Park.

The nominations will be announced at 1.38pm Irish time today.