Posted: Sun., Feb. 19, 2006, 3:22pm PT

'Mountain' Tops BAFTA's
Focus Pic Gets Four Awards
Variety.com
By ADAM DAWTREY



LONDON -- BAFTA came to "Brokeback Mountain" on a rainy Sunday night in London, when Ang Lee's cowboy movie rode away with four prizes including best film and director at the British Academy Film Awards.
In an evening of few surprises, Philip Seymour Hoffman took the best actor prize for "Capote." Reese Witherspoon was named as best actress for "Walk the Line," although she wasn't there in person to accept the award.

Jake Gyllenhaal got the nod for supporting actor in "Brokeback Mountain," and Thandie Newton picked up the supporting actress honor for "Crash."

That was one of two victories for "Crash," with Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco winning the kudos for original screenplay. Larry McMurty and

Diana Ossana completed the quartet of awards for "Brokeback" in the adapted screenplay race.

"Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" won the Alexander Korda Award for best British film. "Pride and Prejudice" director Joe Wright was took the Carl Foreman Award for a first-time British filmmaker.

On a night when the favorites mostly romped home, one minor surprise was how strongly "Memoirs of a Geisha" performed in the technical categories, with Dion Beebe winning for cinematography, John Williams for music and Colleen Atwood for costumes.

"The Constant Gardener," the most nominated film with 10 nods, had to make do with just one prize for editor Claire Simpson.

Jacques Audiard's "The Beat My Heart Skipped" was named best film not in the English language.

There was one win apiece for "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (production design), "King Kong" (special visual effects and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (make-up and hair). The sound award went to "Walk the Line."

James McAvoy won the inaugural Orange Rising Star Award, voted by the general public and backed by the same cellphone company that sponsors BAFTA's film awards.

The only best film nominee to walk away totally empty-handed was "Good Night, and Good Luck." George Clooney also missed out, despite being nominated four times in three categories (director, writer and supporting actor for "Good Night," and supporting actor again for "Syriana").

Clooney's achievement was, however, acknowleged several times throughout the ceremony by various winners, most notably by David Puttnam when accepting a BAFTA fellowship.

Admitting that he had retired from filmmaking eight years ago in disillusion at the demise of cinema with a social conscience, Puttnam said, "Mr Clooney, I take my hat off to you. What you and your colleagues havedone for this industry is truly remarkable, and eight years ago I didn't think it could be done."

Picking up the best film award for "Brokeback Mountain," Focus Features topper James Schamus seized the opportunity to dismiss "this terrible epithet of the gay cowboy movie." "It truly is a universal story of two gay shepherds. It's a gay shepherd movie," he joked.

Lee, accepting the David Lean Award for direction, thanked BAFTA for its consistent support for his work, dating back to "The Ice Storm," "Sense and Sensibility" and "The Wedding Banquet."

A breathless Jake Gyllenhaal said "Brokeback Mountain" meant "even more to me socially than it does artistically."

The ceremony, hosted with his familiar mix of irreverence and ironic effusiveness by Stephen Fry, took place at the Odeon Leicester Square,followed by a formal dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel.


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