12 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE January 14, 2000

It's the season for award ceremonies The Golden Globes are basking in a lavender spotlight

by Kaizaad Kotwal

It's the start of a new year, and you know what that means: The award ceremony season begins. Whether it's the Grammys or the Oscars, it's a pretty decent way of pepping up the winter blahs.

The Golden Globe Awards lead off the three-month parade of ceremonies which ends with the Oscars on March 26. The Golden Globes are generally considered to be good indicators for the Oscars, and this year seems to be no different-except that this year's awards seem to be basking in a lavender spotlight.

The Golden Globes are given by the Foreign Press Association, a small, elite group of international film critics, and are awarded for major categories in both film and television. The association is the only group that divides categories by comedy and drama, giving equal importance to the two genres, as opposed to the Oscars where comedy is definitely seen as inferior to drama.

The Golden Globe nominations came out mid-December and the award ceremony is on January 23. To look at this year's list of nominees, one could almost mistake them for a list from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation or some other GLBT organization. Gay-themed films and TV p programs, gay characters and even openly gay actors are featured prominently in almost all the major categories, heralding an amazing and unprecedented number of nominations from the lavender screens.

Most importantly, with films like The Talented Mr. Ripley, American Beauty, and Boys Don't Cry, this year will be a seminal one where GLBT themes truly went upstream and mainstream.

Two of the top contenders in the Best Motion Picture (Drama) category are American Beauty and The Talented Mr. Ripley. In the former, first time director Sam Mendez (Broadway's Cabaret and The Blue Room) weaves a tale of American suburban dystopia where a Lolita-style subplot is interwoven with real estate sleaze, Nazi plateware, and the perils of homophobia into a stunningly cohesive and mesmerizing whole. In a movie where everything and everyone is direly dysfunctional, the one beacon of normalcy and harmony is a gay couple living in that suburbia. The film makes some powerful observations about unexamined hate and the need for understanding the shortcomings of the American dream.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is Anthony Minghella's masterpiece based on Patricia Highsmith's 1950s novel about a group of young American expatriates in Italy whose lives are completely transformed by Tom Ripley, a gay man who longs to love and longs to be accepted in a world of high rollers and amazing beauty.

Kudos must be given to Minghella for not shying away from the gay subtext of the film. Rather, he infuses the film with a subtle and elusive eroticism not seen on screen since Martin Scorcese's The Age of Innocence. Minghella is nominated for Best Director, as is Mendez for American Beauty. Both deserve the award, and ties have not been uncommon in the history of the Golden Globes. Matt Damon, who plays the tormented and diabolical Tom Ripley, deserves top praise not only for turning in the best male performance of the year, but also for taking on a controversial role at the height of his career. Damon has talked widely about how he didn't see playing a gay man as a risk, but rather as the part of a lifetime.

He has been nominated for a Best Actor (Drama) award, and should win hands down. However, his youth, his stunning career high right now and his recent success with Good Will Hunting will probably work against him.

Damon is competing with Kevin Spacey (American Beauty) and the award will probably go to Russell Crowe (The Insider), who also won the Nation Review Board's award for best actor.

In the Best Actress (Drama) category Hilary Swank has been nominated for her virtuoso performance as Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry. Swank plays a real-life young transgender man who was raped and mur-

dered when his circle of friends discovered his true nature.

Swank has swept the category at several other award ceremonies last year, and also at many of the major film festivals around the world. She has already won awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Boston and Toronto Film Critics, and she was awarded the Breakthrough Performance of 1999 by the National Board of Review. Swank should win, but she has tough competition from American Beauty's Annette Bening, who is the top favorite in the category this year.

The Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) category has amongst its nominees Being John Malkovich, a surrealistic romp through a virtual vortex of actor Malkovich's mind. In this Alice in Wonderland for adults, Katherine Keener and Cameron Diaz end up playing bisexual lovers as the film maneuvers through its hilarious and twisted landscape.

Being John Malkovich is the top contender in this category, having already won several awards, and its chief competition probably comes from the Andy Kauffman biopic Man on the Moon. Keener and Diaz are both nominees in the Best Supporting Actress Category. (Here the Foreign Press Association doesn't divide by drama and comedy.)

Another contender in the Supporting Actress category is Chloe Sevigny, who plays Brandon Teena's girlfriend in Boys Don't Cry. This category is wide open, with Diaz having a slight edge for her risky yet hilarious portrayal as a frumpy housewife.

Openly gay actor Rupert Everett has been nominated for Best Actor (musical or comedy) for his stunningly suave turn in the film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. Everett's main threat comes from Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon, and because An Ideal Husband was released early in 1999, Everett's chances may be hurt.

In the Best Foreign Language Film category the clear favorite is the Spanish entry All About My Mother, Pedro Almodovar's tragicomic tale whose protagonists include a bisexual actor and a glamorous transvestite.

Almodovar, who is openly gay, is probably one of the best directors working today and he has consistently made superlative films where being gay was simply a matter of fact. All About My Mother has cleaned up at many festivals, most notably Cannes, and will be hard to beat at the Golden Globes or the Oscars.

Jude Law, who plays the lustful object of Matt Damon's affection and obsession in The Talented Mr. Ripley, has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Law's performance is flawless, but he faces tough competition from Haley

Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena

Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) and Tom Cruise (Magnolia).

American Beauty has an additional nomination for Best Screenplay (Alan Ball) and Best Original Score (Thomas Newman), while Ripley also has a Best Original Score nomination (Gabriel Yared) and should have garnered Minghella a screenplay nomination for his taut, honest and eloquent storytelling.

The television nominees don't have quite as impressive a GLBT representation, with the exception of Will and Grace. It is high time that this very funny and seminal show got some mainstream attention and accolades. Debra Messing, Eric McCormick and Sean Hayes have all gotten nominations in their respective categories and the show is also nominated as Best Television Series (Comedy). Megan Mullaly (who recently came out as bisexual) should not only have been nominated but should have won for Best Supporting Actress for playing an overthe-top, scene stealing secretary.

This is an amazing year where gay themes, gay characters and even openly gay artists are not only making waves in the mainstream, but are being critically and popularly acclaimed. Tune in on January 23 to see who wins the statuette.

Regardless of how the awards play out, this year's real winners are GLBT audiences, who are finally seeing themselves up on the big and small screens and are reveling in their stories, which are being told in increasing numbers and with greater artistic complexity and thematic finesse.

Kaizaad Kotwal is a Chronicle contributing writer in Columbus.

Matt Damon as

Tom Ripley