"Brokeback Mountain" leads Academy Awards field with 8 nominations

The cowboy love story &to=http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/361/16755_goldenglobes.html' target=_blank>"Brokeback Mountain" led the Academy Awards field Tuesday with eight nominations, among them best picture and honors for actor Heath Ledger and director Ang Lee.

Also nominated for best picture were the Truman Capote story "Capote"; the ensemble drama "Crash"; the Edward R. Murrow chronicle "Good Night, and Good Luck" which George Clooney directed; and the assassination thriller "Munich."

The Johnny Cash biography "Walk the Line," considered a likely best-picture nominee, was shut out of that category, though Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon earned acting nominations.

Three films were tied with six nominations each _ "Crash," "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Memoirs of a Geisha," though "Geisha" was shut out in the top categories.

Besides "Brokeback Mountain," other films from the independent world dominated the field, with Steven Spielberg's assassination thriller "Munich" the only big-studio film to score a best-picture nomination.

In the foreign film category the German movie "Sophie Scholl _ The Final Days," by Marc Rothemund about a young girl's fight against the Hitler regime was nominated along with "Paradise Now," a film about two Palestinian suicide bombers. Also nominated for best foreign film were "Don't Tell" from Italy and "Joyeux Noel," a movie from France.