‘Wolves’ Leads the Pack for Oscars

Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves,” a sweeping tale of the American frontier, dominated the field of Oscar contenders announced this morning in Beverly Hills. The film grabbed 12 Oscar nominations, including best picture, best actor and best director.

The movie led the field of Oscar contenders in a way no movie has since Warren Beatty’s 1981 “Reds,” when it collected the same number of nods.

There were other surprises, too, as the nominations for the 63rd annual Oscars were announced at 5:30 a.m., before about 400 members of the press at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences headquarters in Beverly Hills. A gasp could be heard as two of 1990’s biggest grossing pictures, “Ghost” and “Pretty Woman,” popped up among the nominees.

Paramount Pictures’ romantic thriller, “Ghost,” drew five nods, including one for best picture and one for Whoopi Goldberg’s portrayal of a besieged psychic in the supporting actress category. Julia Roberts was nominated for best actress for her role as a hooker who falls in love with millionaire Richard Gere in Disney/Touchstone’s release of “Pretty Woman.”

Disney/Touchstone’s “Dick Tracy,” directed by and starring Beatty, and Paramount’s release of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part III” tied for second place in the number of nominations, with seven each. While “Godfather” drew nods for best picture and Coppola for best director, among other categories, the nominations for “Tracy” were mostly in technical fields and for best score.

The Martin Scorsese gangland drama, “GoodFellas,” which has swept the best picture prizes among the Los Angeles, New York and National Society of Film Critics, rounded out the five nominees for best picture.

In all, “GoodFellas,” a story of life in the Mafia over 30 years, and based on the book “Wiseguys” by Nicholas Pileggi, earned six Oscar nods. They included Scorsese for best director, supporting actor Joe Pesci, and supporting actress Lorraine Bracco.

The awards will be presented March 25 in nationally televised ceremonies from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

If the sheer number of nominations for “Dances” was a surprise to onlookers, the fact that the Orion Pictures release was singled out in the top categories was not, since it had been high on the best bet lists of Hollywood insiders and won the top Golden Globe Awards--often a weather vane for the Oscars--when they were handed out in January.

For most Oscar watchers, the surprises in the nominations included the omission of director Penny Marshall from the best director category, since her film “Awakenings” was one of the five nominated for best picture, and the fact that Al Pacino did not make the competition for best actor for his role as Mafia chieftain Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part III” but did receive a best supporting actor nod for his frantic portrayal of bad guy Big Boy Caprice in “Dick Tracy.”

Other surprises included Diane Ladd’s nomination for supporting actress in iconoclastic director David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” and the fact that Barry Levinson and none of his cast received nominations for “Avalon.”

The snub of Marshall continues an Academy tradition for not nominating women directors. Only German director Lina Wertmuller has ever been nominated--for her 1976 film “Seven Beauties.”

“I’m completely numb,” said “Dances” co-producer Jim Wilson minutes after he had heard the news of the dozen nominations. Wilson said the film, set in the 1860s, as white settlers began claiming the lands of the Native Americans, had been a three-year project for him and Costner, from inception to last November’s release. “Now comes this moment and it’s unbelievable.”

The directing and acting nominations for Costner, a native Californian who has appeared in a number of hit films, including the popular “Field of Dreams,” are his first ever. If he goes on to win for best actor, Costner would find himself in the rarefied company of Laurence Olivier as the only persons to direct themselves and win the acting award. In addition to Olivier, Costner joins Orson Welles, Woody Allen and Warren Beatty as actors who received nominations for acting and directing themselves.

“Dances” is the first Western to be nominated for best picture since 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and, if it should win, would be the first Western named as best picture since “Cimarron” in 1931.

The nominations for Costner are his first.

“Dances” supporting actress Mary McDonnell, whose career began on the New York stage, also received a first Oscar nomination, as a white woman who was rescued and raised by a tribe of Sioux Indians and falls in love with Costner. “Dances” also collected nominations for Michael Blake for best screenplay adapted from another source, Graham Greene as supporting actor, John Barry’s score and for nearly every major technical category.

Coppola, reached at his hotel room in Tokyo, said it was “good news” to be nominated, especially after the mixed response given his third film in the saga of the Corleone mob family.

“Directing ‘Godfather’ films is a thankless task,” he said. “Every move you make becomes a kind of controversy.” The latest film “got a mixed response the way ‘Godfather II’ got a mixed response, and both previous films were controversial when they came out . . . but they improved with stature as time went on.”

“Godfather III” was released Christmas Day to a wave of anticipation, as it followed Coppola’s two Oscar-winning best pictures, “The Godfather” (1972) and “The Godfather Part II (1974). He won the directing prize for the second and was nominated for best director for the first.

Coming in with five nominations, was Orion Classics’ “Cyrano de Bergerac,” a French film nominated for best foreign language film and starring French cinema leading man Gerard Depardieu, who was included in the best actor category.

With the five nominations for “Cyrano” and the dozen for “Dances With Wolves,” the financially strapped Orion Pictures, together with its subsidiary Orion Classics, led the competition among all film companies with a total of 19 nominations.

Orion president of distribution David Forbes, reached in New York, called it “a great conclusion for his first year with the company.” Coming on top of the company’s widely reported financial woes, he said, the nominations are “ very ironic, but that’s life. . . . It makes the company’s prospects for a good future, much better.”

Next highest among the studios was Paramount, with 16 nods, largely due to “Godfather” and “Ghost,” followed by Warner Bros. in third place with 11, mostly for “GoodFellas” and “Reversal of Fortune.”

Joining Costner and Depardieu as best actor nominees is two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro, nominated this time for his co-starring role in “Awakenings” (the other star, twice-nominated Robin Williams, received no nomination this year).

Rounding out the category are Irish actor Richard Harris (a previous best actor nominee for “This Sporting Life”) for his role in “The Field” and British actor Jeremy Irons as the steely Claus Von Bulow on trial for the murder of his society heiress wife in “Reversal of Fortune.” Irons already has won the Los Angeles film critics award, National Society of Film Critics award and Golden Globe for best actor.

In addition to Julia Roberts who was nominated for supporting actress for 1989’s “Steel Magnolias,” the other nominees for best actress are: Kathy Bates as the nurse in “Misery”; Anjelica Huston, who was previously nominated for supporting actress twice and won for 1985’s “Prizzi’s Honor,” for “The Grifters”; Meryl Streep, eight-time previous Oscar nominee and two-time winner (for supporting actress in “Kramer vs. Kramer” and best actress for “Sophie’s Choice”), for her performance in “Postcards from the Edge,” and Joanne Woodward, a previous best actress Oscar winner for “Three Faces of Eve,” for her role in “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.”

Costner, Coppola and Scorsese are joined in the director’s competition by “Reversal of Fortune’s” Barbet Schroeder and Stephen Frears for his direction of “The Grifters.”

Joining Greene and Pesci in the supporting actor category are Bruce Davison as the lover of a dying AIDS patient in “Longtime Companion,” Andy Garcia as godfather nephew Vincent Mancini in “Godfather III” and five-time previous Oscar nominee Al Pacino as the arch villain in “Dick Tracy.”

Joining Diane Ladd, Lorraine Bracco, Whoopi Goldberg and Mary McDonnell in the race for supporting actress is Annette Bening for her performance in “The Grifters.”

Foreign language film nominees, besides “Cyrano” from France, are Switzerland’s “Journey of Hope,” the People’s Republic of China’s “Ju Dou,” Germany’s “The Nasty Girl” and Italy’s “Open Doors.”