Peter Pan film tipped for Oscar
2004-12-02 20:00
New York - Finding Neverland, a biopic about Peter Pan creator JM Barrie starring Johnny Depp, has been named Best Film by the US National Board of Review (NBR) - widely viewed as a pointer to Oscar success.
Prizes handed out by the NBR, whose membership is a loose amalgam of movie historians and teachers as well as film professionals, herald the opening of the awards season which culminates with the Academy Awards at the end of February.
Finding Neverland, which also stars Kate Winslet, imagines how Barrie derived the inspiration for his enduring Peter Pan tale.
The Aviator edged out
The film took the number one slot in the NBR's top 10 films of 2004, beating out another biopic, Martin Scorcese's The Aviator which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as troubled billionaire Howard Hughes.
Jamie Foxx took the Best Actor award for his lead performance in Ray - yet another biopic - about the life of the late blues legend, Ray Charles, while Annette Bening was named Best Actress for her role as an aging actress in the 1930s period piece, Being Julia.
Awards in January
The awards are to be presented on January 11 at a ceremony in New York.
Other notable winners were Michael Mann who picked up the Best Director award for the Tom Cruise thriller Collateral& and Charlie Kaufmann who won Best Original Screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
In the foreign film section, Spanish movies took the first two places, with The Sea Inside, about Ramon Sampedro who fought a 30-year campaign to win the right to end his life, beating out the latest offering from Pedro Almodovar, Bad Education.