KATHMANDU: The Oscars or the 78th Academy Awards is here and many have slated this year’s award function to be the gayest Oscar ever. And they may be true with Brokeback Mountain, a film about two cowboys’ romantic love for each other, being nominated in eight categories — best director, best film, best actor among them.

However, the other contenders are not to be ignored or overlooked. Like for example, Capote.

In 1959, Truman Capote, a popular writer for The New Yorker, learns about the horrific and senseles murder of a family of four in Halcomb, Kansas. Capote and his partner Harper Lee travel to the town to research for an article. However, as Capote digs deeper into the story, he is inspired to expand the project into what would be his greatest work, In Cold Blood.

Bafta winner Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays the title role in Capote lost a reported 40 pounds to play the legendary author and spent months perfecting his mannerisms and distinctive way of speaking.

Hoffman, who previously played Rolling Stone journalist Lester Bangs in the 2000 film Almost Famous, says he felt some pressure portraying such a well-known personality. “It upped the stakes knowing people knew how he talked and behaved,” he told the BBC News website. “It took about six months of preparation, involving audio tapes, video tapes, books and people I talked to. I used everything I could get my hands on. It was then a matter of trial and error, an hour and a half every day.”

Nailing Capote’s external affectations, however, was only one part of the process. “I could do all these things, but ultimately I was going to have to come up with the guts of it,” he explains. “The goal wasn’t to mimic him but to capture his energy. I really wanted to

get the essence of him, because I knew that would be more powerful.”

In the film, Capote’s struggle to complete In Cold Blood is complicated when he befriends one of the killers.

And there’s the George Clooney factor this year with Clooney being nominated for Best Actor in Supporting Role (Syriana) and Best Director (Good Night, and Good Luck).

Shot in black and white and chronicling Edward R Murrow’s famously bold stance against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s blacklist, Good Night is both a plea for honest, gutsy reportage (the tagline is ‘we will not walk in fear of one another’), and a perfectly plotted, superbly acted depiction of a turning point in American news.

“It’s a pretty amazing time for me,” says Clooney.

Says Clooney, “Good Night started because I grew up on the newsroom floor watching my dad work with these really wonderful reporters. And Murrow was always the high water mark that everyone aims for. So it was my love of that, it was certainly a tip of my hat to my dad and the sacrifices he’s made over the years.”

One person who doesn’t think he will win is Clooney himself. “I don’t think we’re going to win any (Oscars). There’s been a lot of Brokeback Mountain stuff.”

But Clooney is glad the nominations have called attention to both films. “Oscar nominations are as important as anything,” he says. “The hope is that people will see these films — I don’t know about wins.”

Crash, which was reviewed by our own Dubby Bhagat (Dubby’s DVDiscussion on December 16, 2005) is a mind boggling story about a number of people of different ethnicities

who are thrown together in Los Angeles.

The other actor to watch out for is Reese Witherspoon in Walk The Line. Her performance as June Carter Cash wife of country star Johnny Cash, who was a country star in her own right, has attracted her greatest critical acclaim till date. It has already earned Witherspoon the best actress prize from the National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics Circle.

The 78th annual Academy Awards is scheduled for 8:00 pm ET on March 5. — HNS