For the first time in 24 years a musical won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Rob Marshall’s innovative film version of Kander and Ebb’s Chicago was catnip for Oscar voters in that it was about two of their favorite subjects: show business and the newspaper business, as well as being set in one of their favorite eras: prohibition. The 1926 Broadway play, Chicago,about kill crazy gold-diggers, had been first filmed as a silent in 1927, then as a talkie under the title Roxie Hart in 1942. The 1975 musical version, which ran for more than two years on Broadway, was even more successfully revived on Broadway in 1996. That production is still running fifteen years later.

Marshall’s film won six Oscars, including Best Supporting Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones; Art Direction; Costume Design; Editing and Sound. It had been nominated for a total of thirteen awards including Best Director; Adapted Screenplay; Actress Renee Zellweger; Supporting Actor John C. Reilly; Supporting Actress Queen Latifah; Cinematography and Song (“I Move On”).

Chicago’s win, though not unexpected, came after early favorite Gangs of New York opened to mixed reviews. Its release delayed for more than a year, director Martin Scorsese was early on thought to be the prohibitive favorite to win the award that had long eluded him. Alas, it was not to be. Although the Civil War era gangster film managed a whopping ten nominations, it lost them all including Best Actor, which many thought would go to Daniel Day-Lewis. The film had also been nominated for Best Original Screenplay; Editing; Cinematography; Art Direction; Costume Design; Sound and Song (“The Hands That Built America”).

The second of Peter Jackson’s films of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Two Towers,received a Best Picture nod along with five other nominations including Best Editing; Sound; Art Direction; Sound Editing and Visual Effects, winning that latter two categories.

The other two nominees for Best Picture were considered long shots.

Stephen Daldry’s film of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours about three women of different generations whose lives are linked, started out awards season on a high note, winning the National Board of Review award for Best Picture, but nothing of note after that. Nevertheless it bagged nine Oscar nominations including Best Director; Supporting Actor Ed Harris; Supporting Actress Julianne Moore; Adapted Screenplay; Editing; Costume Design and Score. Its sole win, as expected, was for Best Actress Nicole Kidman as writer Virginia Woolf.

Roman Polanski’s Holocaust drama, The Pianist, which had been beneath the radar throughout the precursors leading up to the Oscars was nominated for seven Oscars. As expected it failed to win for Best Cinematography; Editing and Costume Design, but then scored three major upsets in winning Best Adapted Screenplay; Actor (Adrien Brody) and Director.

Other films Oscar like this year included Far From Heaven; Adaptation; About Schmidt; Talk to Her; Y Tu Mama Tambien; Unfaithful; Frida; Road to Perdition; Catch Me If You Can; About a Boy and Spirited Away.

A homage to the films of 1950s director Douglas Sirk, Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven won numerous year-end awards including five awards from the New York Film Critics, one more than the number of nominations the Academy gave it. Oscar nominated it for Best Actress Julianne Moore; Original Screenplay; Cinematography and Art Direction. Moore, who had also been nominated, as noted, in the supporting category for The Hours, was considered her Hours co-star Kidman’s biggest competition for her portrayal of a naïve Connecticut housewife whose husband, Dennis Quaid, is a closeted gay man.

The third star of The Hours, Meryl Streep was considered a possible double nominee as well, as a lesbian mom in The Hours and as a literary agent in Spike Jonze’s bizarre comedy, Adaptation, but she was nominated only in the supporting category for the latter film, for which she won a Golden Globe. Her co-star Chris Cooper won the supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of an eccentric orchid thief. Nicolas Cage had also been nominated for Best Actor as a schizophrenic writer and Charlie Kaufman and his fictitious twin brother Donald were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.

While Streep was receiving her thirteenth nomination, another Oscar favorite, Jack Nicholson, was receiving his twelfth for Alexander Payne’s comedy-drama, About Schmidt in which he played a recently retired businessman. Kathy Bates was also nominated for her supporting role as he his daughter’s would-be mother-in-law.

The only director of a Best Picture nominee not nominated this year was The Two Towers’ Peter Jackson. Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar was nominated in his place for his strangely affecting tale of two men who meet while visiting their girlfriends who are both in a coma. Almodovar won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the film’s only other nomination.

One of the films Talk to Her beat in the screenplay category was the Mexican road drama, Y Tu Mama Tambien, directed and co-written by the emerging Alfonso Cuaron whose next film would be Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Former child actress Diane Lane followed her surprise Best Actress win form the New York Film Critics with an Oscar nod for her smoldering portrayal of the straying wife in Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful.

The always smoldering Salma Hayek received a Best Actress nomination for her portrayal of artist Frida Kahlo in Julie Taymor’s Frida, one of the film’s six nominations. It won two, for Best Makeup and Score. Alfred Molina, who many considered the film’s principal asset as Kahlo’s volatile husband, artist Diego Rivera, was surprisingly left off the list of supporting actor nominees.

Not ignored, however, was screen legend Paul Newman who received his ninth nomination for his portrayal of a mob boss in Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition, one of the film’s six nominations. The Tom Hanks starrer won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, a posthumous award for the legendary Conrad Hall.

Hnaks’ other film this year, Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can,was also recognized in the Best Supporting Actor category with a nod going to Christopher Walken for his portrayal of Leonardo DiCaprio’s hapless father in the film based on the life of teenage con man Frank Abagnale, Jr. The film had also been nominated for Best Score.

The Weitz Brothers’ film of Nicholas Hornby’s wryly observed comedy, About a Boy, received a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for the brothers and Peter Hedges.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the revered Japanese animator the second Oscar awarded in the Best Animated Feature category.

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include the Blu-ray debuts of Ben-Hur and Footloose.