Annette Bening took most the acting kudos for Being Julia but the Canadian film industry acknowleged Bruce Greenwood's subtle and multi-leveled performance with both a Genie nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a nod from the Vancouver Film Critics:

Genie Awards

Genie nods announced

Being Julia up for best picture; The Last Tunnel nabs eight nominations

By Liz Braun, Sun Media

TORONTO -- Nominations for the 25th annual Genie Awards bring further accolades for Being Julia, recognized in the best motion picture category and with a nod for Bruce Greenwood as best supporting actor. Being Julia - which attracted an Oscar nomination for Annette Bening's performance as well as Golden Globe and National Board of Review honours - is up against Love, Sex and Eating the Bones, Ma vie en cinemascope, Looking for Alexander (Memoires affectives) and The Triplets of Belleville in the best-picture category.

This year's big nomination magnet is the Quebec film The Last Tunnel (Le dernier tunnel), which has been recognized in eight categories.

Michel Cote was nominated for best lead actor, Jean Lapointe for best supporting actor, and the film was nominated for achievement in cinematography, editing, original score, art direction, overall sound and sound editing.

The film Head in the Clouds, which stars Charlize Theron, Penelope Cruz and Stuart Townsend, got all the same nominations, except acting: cinematography, editing, original score, art direction, costume design, overall sound and sound editing.

Le dernier tunnel is an intense heist film based on a real-life robbery in Montreal in the 1990s. All those nominations notwithstanding, the film did not make the best-picture cut. And it must have directed itself, as Eric Canuel was not nominated in the director category.

The honours there went to Denise Filiatrault for Ma vie en cinemascope, Pierre Houle for Machine Gun Molly, Bronwen Hughes for Stander, Francis Leclerc for Looking for Alexander and David "Sudz" Sutherland for Love, Sex and Eating the Bones.

At any rate, The Last Tunnel's Michel Cote is joined for best-actor nominations by Roy Dupuis for his performance in Looking For Alexander, David La Haye for Nouvelle-France, Sir Ian McKellen for Emile and Nick Stahl in Twist.

For supporting actor, the nominees (in addition to Last Tunnel's Jean Lapointe and Being Julia's Bruce Greenwood) are Gary Farmer (Twist), Brendan Fehr (Sugar) and Kyle MacLachlan (Touch of Pink).

Nominations for lead actress this year go to Isabelle Blais for Love & Magnets, Celine Bonnier for her work in Machine Gun Molly, Pascale Bussieres in Ma vie en cinemascope, Emily Hampshire in Blood and Jacinthe Lague for Elles etaient cinq (The Five of Us).

Best supporting actress kudos were handed out to Juliette Gosselin (Nouvelle-France), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Childstar), Sylvie Moreau (Love and Magnets) Ellen Page (Wilby Wonderful) and Susana Salazar (A Silent Love).

This year's best documentary nominations went to The Corporation, Mr. Mergler's Gift and What Remains of Us.

Andrea Martin, who is currently starring on Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof, will host the Genie Awards this year; her sister, veteran producer Marcia Martin, is executive producer of the Genie telecast. This year's Genie Awards take place March 21 in Toronto and rebroadcast on Access (Cable 9).

Edmonton Sun 2/9/05

940 News

Andrea Martin tabbed to host Genie Awards in Toronto
on March 21 at 16:20 on February 8, 2005, EST.

TORONTO (CP) - Quebec cinema again dominates the annual Genie Awards, with Ma vie en cinemascope - the story of the spectacular rise and tragic fall of 1950s Quebec torch singer Alys Robi - snagging seven nods, including the best picture category. The 2005 Genies are celebrating their 25th year and will be televised March 21 in prime time by CHUM stations like last year.

The other best-picture contenders are Robert Lantos's Being Julia with its Oscar-nominated performance by Annette Bening; Toronto filmmaker Sudz Sutherland's romantic comedy Love, Sex and Eating the Bones; the animated feature The Triplets of Belleville; and Memoires affectives (Looking for Alexander) with Roy Dupuis as an amnesiac trying to retrieve his memories.

"When you do look back at 25 years you really do see some amazing work that we have done," said Marcia Martin, who will executive-produce the Genie telecast for CHUM. "It's not all just snow scenes in the Arctic."

Martin said she was determined to keep the show to a tight 90 minutes this year.

The nominations are not without their ironies. The two French-language contenders Ma vie en cinemascope and Memoires affectives have not been seen yet in English Canada. And, under the complex rules that define a Canadian production, Being Julia qualifies in the best picture category but because of international financing and the fact the director, Istvan Szabo, is not Canadian, American Bening's performance does not quality in the best actress category.

"We don't make those rules," explains Maria Topalovich, president and CEO of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, adding that a film is certified as Canadian by Telefilm Canada.

Other Quebec films out in front of the pack include Machine Gun Molly (seven nominations), The Last Tunnel (eight) and Nouvelle-France (six). Being Julia got a second nomination for Bruce Greenwood's supporting actor performance. Head in the Clouds, which starred Charlize Theron, is another international co-production about resistance fighters during the Second World War. It was handed seven nominations.

Leading actor/actress contenders include Dupuis, Pascale Bussieres (who not only acts but does her own singing as Robi in Ma vie en cinemascope), Emily Hampshire in Jerry Ciccoritti's Blood, Ian McKellen in Emile, Nick Stahl and Gary Farmer in Twist, Jennifer Jason Leigh in Childstar, Brendan Fehr in Sugar and Kyle MacLachlan (as the spirit of Cary Grant) in Touch of Pink.

A full list of nominees is available online (www.genieawards.ca).

The fact so many contenders are Quebec films unseen by English Canadian audiences will affect the Genie awards show's ratings, Topalovich said.

"Those are the challenges of having a national cinema within Canada and those are the challenges that distributors and producers are trying to address," she said.

"The Quebec movies that we're celebrating are huge hits quite often in Quebec that really do not travel and do not easily find audiences in English Canada."

Paul Gratton, the Academy chairman, said the Genies can help promising titles like Ma vie en cinemascope.

"We might help the movie more by making English audiences aware of it."

Martin, too, acknowledged the problem.

"I can't lie and say it isn't. It's very tough to try and get an audience, number 1, because a lot of these films, unfortunately, have not been seen by a lot of Canadians."

She said in TV and music there are separate English and French awards, something they have considered for the Genies too. The Genies invariably netted audiences in the 250,000-300,000 on CBC in previous years. Martin said last year, when CHUM took over the telecast, they were up by 25 per cent with a noticeable increase in key 18-24 age demographic.

Martin, meanwhile, announced that former SCTV personality (and her sister) Andrea Martin has been chosen to host the telecast this year. Former Kid in the Hall Scott Thomson did the honours last year .

"Things haven't gone too well since my SCTV days," Martin joked in a taped segment from New York, where she was seen as a Manhattan bag lady.

"So when the kids in Canada found me on the street and said would you host this, the Genie thing - the I Dream of Genie thing - I said yeah . . . bring on the bling."

In reality, Martin is currently starring on Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof.

The 2005 Genies will be seen on CHUM's Citytv stations in Toronto and Vancouver, as well as the specialty channels Bravo, Star, ASN, Access and on the French-language Musimax. 940 News

Vancouver Critics

Critics Circle - Sideways As Year's Best Pic
By Ken Eisner

Defying all expectations, the Vancouver Critics Circle decided that Sideways was the best film of 2004, with Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator, and Before Sunset not far behind. With near-unanimity, as well as some audible groaning, more than a dozen of our town's crankiest voices gave out awards for the previous year's top movies.

 The fifth annual dinner, held on Monday (January 17), was notable for its sense of déjà viewing, as critics from print and electronic media failed to come up with obscurities guaranteed to make our sophisticated audience cry out: "Hey, I never even hearda that movie." You don't know how sorry we are.

Sideways, the wine-soaked indie flick about middle-aged jitters and motorcycle helmets, was the inescapable favourite, although--perhaps because no one drank anything but beer and water--several of the other top awards leaned in Baby's direction. The boxing film's main man, Clint Eastwood, was named best director, with fly boy Martin Scorsese and head vintner Alexander Payne runners-up. Million-dollar supporting actor Morgan Freeman was tops in his category, followed by Closer's Clive Owen and Side-man Thomas Haden Church. Baby star Hilary Swank was barely beaten by Vera Drake herself, Imelda Staunton, for best actress, with Mrs. Kinsey, Laura Linney, in the third spot.

Kinsey's Liam Neeson and Sideways star Paul Giamatti were nudged out by Ray's piano-playing Jamie Foxx for best actor. Giamatti-kissing Virginia Madsen was best supporting actress, followed by Cate Blanchett for her turns in The Aviator and Coffee and Cigarettes, and Natalie Portman for roles in both Closer and Garden State.

Canadian films placed well in the general documentary slot, with Velcrow Ripper's ScaredSacred coming in a close second to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. And in the Canadian categories, Ripper's flick was just behind Don McKellar's just-released (but still eligible under the circle's rules because of 2004 film-fest screenings) Childstar as best Canuck effort overall. Childstar also grabbed awards for star and director McKellar (followed by Ripper and Shake Hands With the Devil's Peter Raymont) and supporting actor Dave Foley, followed by the same film's Mark Rendall and Being Julia's Bruce Greenwood. After McKellar for best actor came Noel Burton, for the superb Mexican-Canadian coproduction A Silent Love, which also garnered votes for Susana Salazar for best supporting actress, although she was beaten by Rebecca Jenkins in the ensemble effort Wilby Wonderful.

Best actress was Joely Collins for her bravura performance in Bruce McDonald's still-unreleased (and eligible à la Childstar) The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess, followed by Childstar's Jennifer Jason Leigh and Liane Balaban, so sassy in the caperish Seven Times Lucky.

More unanimity was found in giving the best foreign-language film prize to A Very Long Engagement--a term that described the evening, as well--with many votes also going to The Motorcycle Diaries and Maria Full of Grace, which was an American film shot almost entirely in Spanish.

Movie Notes / Georgia Strait 1/20/05