Winner of 79 international awards, Ang Lee’s film of Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain with a screenplay by Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, Hud) and Diana Ossana, was as sure a bet to win 2005’s Best Picture Oscar as any film in history. But it didn’t. Was it backlash against the film’s gay love story or did the voters really like the L.A. set multi-cultural drama Crash that much more? Or was it something else?

As Oscar night progressed, Lee, McMurtry and Ossana and the film’s score had won their categories as expected. Crash had won Original Screenplay and Editing. Then the Best Picture envelope was opened revealing Crash to be the winner, setting off a controversy that the Academy still hasn’t recovered from.

What I think was going on is that many in the Academy were tired of doing the expected, voting for the film that everyone thought they should. Either that or they expected Brokeback to win and decided their vote wouldn’t matter so opted to vote for something else instead. They did the same thing last year when they passed over The Social Network which had even more wins than Brokeback Mountain (94) in favor of The King’s Speech. We’ll never know for sure, of course, but it just doesn’t make sense that they would give a film a Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay award and refuse to vote for it for Best Picture because they were opposed to the story line. It just doesn’t compute. Six years after the fact one wonders how many who had voted for the already pretty much forgotten Crash would, given the chance, switch their votes to Lee’s tragic love story.

Paul Haggis’ Crash was arguably the weakest of the nominees, which also included George Clooney’s fascinating look at the early TV career of Edward L. Murrow, Good Night, and Good Luck; Bennett Miller’s Capote, the story behind the writer’s In Cold Blood and Stephen Spielberg’s Munich about the aftermath of the assassination of the Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics.

Capote’s Philip Seymour Hoffman took home the Best Actor Oscar for his interpretation of author Truman Capote. Although his win was expected, many feel Toby Jones did a better job portraying the character in Douglas McGrath’s similar Infamous released the following year. Hoffman’s competition consisted of three actors at their career zeniths: Heath Ledger as the heartsick Ennis del Mar in Brokeback Mountain; David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck and Joaquin Phoenix as country singing legend Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. Also in the running was surprise nominee Terrence Howard as a pimp who wants to be a hip-hop star in Hustler & Flow.

The Best Actress race was one of the weakest in years, with Reese Witherspoon in basically a supporting role as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line taking the award. Her competition included TV star Felicity Huffman making the transition to the big screen as a pre-operative male-to-female transsexual in Duncan Tucker’s Transamerica; newcomer Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett in the umpteenth film version of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and former winners Judi Dench as the real life owner of a World War II London burlesque theatre in Mrs. Henderson Presents and Charlize Theron as a the real life miner who won the first successful major sexual harassment case in America in North Country.

George Clooney, who is just about the closest to a suave leading man as we’ve got these days was not only nominated for his Good Night, and Good Luck direction and screenplay, he was also a nominee for Best Supporting Actor for the political thriller Syriana. Clooney handily won the award over Jake Gyllenhaal as Heath Ledger’s rodeo playing lover in Brokeback Mountain; Matt Dillon as a bigoted cop in Crash; former Best Actor winner William Hurt as a gangster in A History of Violence and finally, after being passed over for both American Splendor and Sideways, Paul Giamtti as real life fight manager Joe Gould in Cinderella Man.

Rachel Weisz as a murdered activist in The Constant Gardener easily won the Best Supporting Actress award over an impressive field that included Michelle Williams as Heath Ledger’s unhappy wife in Brokeback Mountain; Catherine Keener as To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee in Capote; former Best Actress winner Frances McDormand as a dump truck driver in North Country and Amy Adams as a lonely, albeit very pregnant wife in Junebug.

Films beyond the top six categories garnering nominations this year included Match Point and The Squid and the Whale, both nominated for Best Original Screenplay.

For Woody Allen, Match Point represented his 21st and last nomination to date. The crime drama about a tennis pro with murder on his mind starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Brian Cox and Emily Mortimer. Allen had previously won three Oscars for writing and directing Annie Hall and writing Hannah and Her Sisters.

Noah Baumbach’s autobiographical film, The Squid and the Whale was based on his troubled, if privileged, upbringing in Brooklyn in the 1980s as his parents played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney go through a divorce. Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline both made impressions as Noah and his brother, herein named Walt and Frank.

Other films that Oscar liked included Best Documentary Feature March of the Penguins narrated by last year’s Supporting Actor winner Morgan Freeman; Best Makeup winner The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of three films to date made from C.S. Lewis’ famed Narnia series; Best Cinematography, Art Direction and Costume Design winner Memoirs of a Geisha, based on the best-seller and Best Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing winner King Kong.

Peter Jackson’s biggest yet version of King Kong was the third go-around for the classic fantasy horror story. The original 1933 version starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot had been a box office bonanza. The 1976 version starring Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges and Charles Grodin, with the climax moved from the Empire State building to the World Trade Center was less successful both critically and commercially. This version starring Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrian Brody came in half way between the two in terms of popularity.

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

This week’s new DVD releases include Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and the Blu-ray debut of The Guns of Navarone.