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Story by: Jack Foley
AS the Oscar race shows signs of gathering pace, the smart money
would appear to be on either Clint Eastwood’s Mystic
River, or Peter Jackson’s Lord
of the Rings: The Return of the King, walking away with the
major honours.
The former leads the nominations for the Broadcast Film Critics
Association (BFCA) Awards, announced earlier this week, with a
total of eight nods, including best film.
In America, Jim Sheridan’s
semi-autobiographical tale of an Irish family moving to New York
and coming to terms with the death of one of their children, starring
Samantha Morton, got seven.
Eight other films will compete for best film, including The Return
Of The King and Nicole Kidman's epic Cold
Mountain.
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The prizes are voted for by North American film critics and awarded
in January. They are [perceived as yet another good pointer to
the Oscars, especially as last year’s winner, Chcago,
repeated the trick at the Academy Awards.
Mystic River, which stars Sean Penn as a father trying to get
to grips with the murder of his daughter, and which co-stars Tim
Robbins, Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne, has already been
included in the US National
Board of Review's list of the best 10 films of 2003.
While In America is also being seen as a strong outside bet for
the awards season.
Bill Murray's acclaimed comedy, Lost
In Translation, and Tim Burton's Big
Fish have five nominations each, while The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King has four. Animated adventure, Finding
Nemo, Tom Cruise’s epic, The
Last Samurai, Russell Crowe’s Master
and Commander and Tobey Maguire’s Seabiscuit
round out the nominees for best film.
Joey Berlin, BFCA president, described the list as ‘fascinating’,
because of its diversity of ‘several epics and several smaller,
intensely personal films’.
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