Awards Season Starts Again

This year's movie awards season has kicked off with the National Board of Review naming its winners. Philip Kaufman's Quills, about the last days of the Marquis De Sade, was voted the best film of 2000. But Kaufman and his stars, Geoffrey Rush and Kate Winslet, were overlooked for the other awards. Best director went instead to Steven Soderbergh for Traffic, the best actress prize went to Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich (which Soderbergh also directed), and Spanish actor Javier Bardem was named best actor for his role in Before Night Falls. All the awards ceremonies which precede the Oscars are used as possible indicators of who and what will win the Academy Awards. The field is wide open this year, with no obvious winner, but several possible candidates. Quills would seem an unlikely Oscar winner, but Julia Roberts is starting to look like a real contender.