“Brokeback Mountain” led the Golden Globes on Monday with four prizes, including best dramatic film and the directing honor for Ang Lee.
The film, which is playing locally at The Magnolia, is a certain lock for a best picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Those nominations will be announced on Jan. 31.
It was a triumphant night for films dealing with homosexuality and transsexuality. Along with the victories for “Brokeback Mountain,” acting honors went to Felicity Huffman in a gender-bending role as a man preparing for sex-change surgery in “Transamerica” and Philip Seymour Hoffman as gay author Truman Capote in “Capote.”
“I know as actors our job is usually to shed our skins, but I think as people our job is to become who we really are, and so I would like to salute the men and women who brave ostracism, alienation and a life lived on the margins to become who they really are,” Huffman said.
George Clooney, who was among the directing nominees for “Good Night, and Good Luck,” won the supporting actor Globe for the oil-industry thriller “Syriana” and Rachel Weisz earned the supporting actress award for the murder thriller “The Constant Gardener.”
Sophomore Ken Morris thought that “Good Night” was a well done film that showed “a new angle on American history.”
“Syriana” spins a convoluted story of multiple characters caught up in a web of deceit, greed, corruption and power-brokering over Middle Eastern oil supplies. Clooney plays a fiercely devoted CIA undercover agent who comes to question his country’s actions in the region.
Clooney thanked writer-director Stephen Gaghan for a movie “that asks a lot of difficult questions.”
The Johnny Cash biography “Walk the Line” won the Globe for best musical or comedy film and earned acting honors for stars Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.
“Line” beat “Pride and Prejudice,” a favorite of sophomore Amy Hartsoe, who thought the film was “true to Jane Austin, yet revamped enough for a modern day audience.”
Director Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” the story of two rugged Western family men (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) concealing their affair, has emerged as a front-runner for the Oscars – which occasionally has handed out top acting prizes for performers in homosexual or gender-bending roles but has never given the best picture Oscar to a gay-themed film.
The Globes are awarded by the relatively small Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which has about 80 members, compared with the 5,800 film professionals eligible to vote for the Oscars.
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.
