‘Cold Mountain’ Leads British Film Nods
LONDON – “Cold Mountain” with 13 nominations and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” with a dozen led the nominations Monday from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
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Both movies will compete for best picture against Tim Burton’s whimsical “Big Fish,” Peter Weir’s seafaring saga “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” and Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation,” the young director’s second film.
Anthony Minghella, who also wrote “Cold Mountain,” and Peter Jackson (“Lord of the Rings”) rounded out the best director category.
Left out of the running were “Mystic River” and its director, Clint Eastwood.
The BAFTA winners will be announced Feb. 15, two weeks before the Oscars.
Sean Penn was nominated twice for best actor, for “Mystic River” and “21 Grams.” Also nominated was Penn’s co-star in “21 Grams,” Benicio del Toro; Jude Law (“Cold Mountain”); Bill Murray (“Lost in Translation”), and Johnny Depp (“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”).
Depp’s BAFTA citation follows nominations in the same category at this year’s Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globes. The attention for the kind of comic performance often overlooked at awards season augurs well for Depp’s chances when the Oscar nominations come out Jan. 27.
Nicole Kidman, the female lead in “Cold Mountain,” failed to get a BAFTA nod.
The best actress nominees were Anne Reid (“The Mother”); Naomi Watts (“21 Grams”); Uma Thurman (“Kill Bill Vol. 1”); and a double nomination for Scarlett Johansson, for “Lost In Translation” and “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”
“Girl,” English director Peter Webber’s film version of the Tracy Chevalier best seller, had a surprisingly strong showing. The film was nominated in 10 categories, with Judy Parfitt an unexpected supporting actress nominee and Eduardo Serra cited for his extraordinary camerawork, which pays homage to the film’s subject, the Dutch artist Vermeer.
Besides Parfitt, the supporting actress category includes Holly Hunter (“thirteen”), Laura Linney (“Mystic River”), Emma Thompson (“Love Actually”), and Oscar favorite Renee Zellweger (“Cold Mountain”).
Tim Robbins, Penn’s co-star in “Mystic River,” is the only American nominee in the supporting actor category. He goes up against Bill Nighy as the amiable crooner of “Love Actually”; Ian McKellen’s bearded Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings”; Albert Finney’s dying patriarch in “Big Fish”; and Paul Bettany in “Master and Commander.”
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