By David Germain, AP Movie Writer
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) - Hollywood's box-office queen may finally get an Academy Award. One of the academy's favorite sons may win his third. And next month's Oscar bash could turn into a major toga party.
With a few surprises, Oscar nominations came out Tuesday largely as expected, with the Roman epic Gladiator dominating. Its 12 nods include best picture, director, actor and supporting actor.
The other best-picture nominees are Chocolat, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich and Traffic.
Cast Away star Tom Hanks has another shot at winning his third statue, grabbing his fifth best-actor nomination.
Julia Roberts capped a string of hits with her best performance ever in Erin Brockovich, earning her first Oscar nomination since back-to-back nods for Steel Magnolias and Pretty Woman in 1989 and 1990.
Some of her competitors for best actress concede Roberts may be unbeatable.
"I think she's going to resolve it for me," said past Oscar winner Juliette Binoche, who was nominated for Chocolat. "I think she's the favorite."
Erin Brockovich director Steven Soderbergh has an enviable dilemma: A best-director nomination for that film and another for Traffic. The dual honors could cost him, though, since academy members might split their vote between the two films and undermine Soderbergh's chances of winning.
Gladiator, which recreated ancient Rome using striking digital effects, has emerged as the nominal best-picture front-runner. Its other nominations include best actor for Russell Crowe, supporting actor for Joaquin Phoenix and director for Ridley Scott.
With its dominance in technical categories such as sound, visual effects and editing, Gladiator is well positioned to collect the most trophies come Oscar night.
Its closest competitor is the martial-arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, whose 10 nominations include best picture, foreign-language film and director for Ang Lee.
Gladiator and Crouching Tiger will go head-to-head in seven Oscar categories.
Surprises included a lead-actor nomination for Ed Harris and a supporting-actress nod for Marcia Gay Harden for Pollock, a film biography of painter Jackson Pollock that Harris also directed.
Harden was in a hotel room in Denver when she learned of her nomination. She said she lurched around crying in excitement, her hair wrapped in a wet towel.
When a room-service waiter came to the door, she told him, "Oh, my God, I was just nominated for an Oscar," Harden said. "I started crying again. The waiter and I were jumping up and down in the room."
Another small surprise was the best-picture slot for Chocolat, a comic romance that had been considered a bit slight next to serious, issue-driven films such as Erin Brockovich and Gladiator.
Chocolat distributor Miramax has been a perennially fierce Oscar campaigner. In the weeks leading up to the nominations, Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein stumped hard to raise academy awareness for Chocolat, even visiting a Washington, D.C., theater to talk up the film.
Miramax has been accused of campaigning its way to nominations and even Oscars themselves, notably its best-picture win for Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan two years ago.
"There's no way to influence or buy a vote on the Oscars. That's the most insane and stupid thing," Weinstein said Tuesday. "People who say that are so naive, they don't understand the Oscar race. The only thing you can do with an Oscar movie is create awareness that gets people to see your movie."
Binoche, whose supporting-actress Oscar came for Miramax's The English Patient said Chocolat was simply a sweet film whose sentimentality clicked with academy members. "If you do a lot of marketing for a bad film, it won't work," Binoche said. "In order to do marketing for a movie, you have to have a good film, and that's what Miramax had in their hands."
� 2001 The Associated Press