Gay guide to THE OSCARS.

Which contenders merit gay and lesbian accolades? Pickings may seem slim, but The Advocate's fifth annual survey of the Academy Award nominees teases out all those queer connections

Break out the togas, whip up some cuba libres, and mark your calendar for March 25, when ABC presents the 73rd Annual Academy Awards. Just because many of our favorite gay and lesbian films from 2000 are nowhere to be found (no original screenplay nod for Chuck & Buck? No documentary nomination for Paragraph 175? No Best Turkey Baster mention for What's Cooking? Nothing for Urbania?) doesn't mean we have no stake in the proceedings--but we'll be getting to Shadow of the Vampire momentarily.

(1) BILLY ELLIOT

Why it's here: Eleven-year-old Billy Elliot, an English coal miner's son with a pair of irrepressibly dancing feet, charmed the Academy into nominating Stephen Daldry (its first-time director), cited Lee Hall's script in the original screenplay category, and rewarded Julie Walters's chainsmoking ballet mistress with a Best Supporting Actress slot.

Why we care: Openly gay theater director Daldry sets our toes to tapping as Billy, played winningly by an exuberant Jamie Bell, dances through the streets of Durham in northern England like a pint-size Gene Kelly. A movie that embraces the outsider in all of us--Billy, whose eventual sexual orientation is left refreshingly open-ended, isn't at all fazed when his gay best friend, Michael (Stuart Wells), plants an affectionate kiss on him--it reminds us that even an awkward duckling can grow up to be a swan king.

(2) BEFORE NIGHT FALLS

Why it's here: Painter Julian Schnabel's impressionistic biostudy of persecuted gay Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas vaulted Spanish actor Javier Bardem into the select company of fellow Best Actor nominees Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, and Geoffrey Rush.

Why we care: Bardem appeared in Pedro Almodovar's High Heels and Live Flesh, and he tested his lavender wings in the 1999 Spanish film Second Skin. In Before Night Falls he gives a full-blooded performance--sensual, impassioned, and heartbreaking--as the tragic Arenas, who is forced to abandon his country to be true to both his sexuality and his talent. And Johnny Depp's brief turn as the transvestite smuggler Bon Bon is an added hoot.

(3) WONDER BOYS

Why it's here: Writer Steve Kloves (who has since gone on to tackle the upcoming Harry Potter feature) won a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for penning the film version of Michael Chabon's novel, a shaggily eccentric study of a university professor (Michael Douglas) whose life is seriously unraveling.

Why we care: Robert Downey Jr. as Douglas's gay book editor, Terry Crabtree, crashes the pot-fueled party with transvestite Miss Sloviak (Michael Cavadias) in tow and treats Tobey Maguire's questioning student to some extra credit under the sheets.

LONG NIGHT'S JOURNEY INTO DAY

Why it's here: Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffmann's wrenching examination of South Africa's attempts to heal the wounds of apartheid earned them a Best Documentary Feature nomination.

Why we care: The filmmakers and life partners learned their craft on such groundbreaking gay and lesbian documentaries as the Oscar-winning The Times of Harvey Milk (on which they both worked) and the Oscar-nominated autobiographical Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter (which Hoffmann directed and Reid photographed).

(4) GLADIATOR

Why it's here: The movie to beat for the Best Picture thumbs-up, director Ridley Scott's Roman holiday racked up a commanding 12 nominations, in just about every category available.

Why we care: We confess--we're a sucker for sweaty guys in togas. And while Best Supporting Actor nominee Joaquin Phoenix's evil emperor Commodus may have incestuous eyes for his sister, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the haute grandeur with which he stomps around his decadently decorated digs simply screams "evil queen."

(5) ERIN BROCKOVICH

Why it's here: Best Actress front-runner Julia Roberts, playing a social reformer whose fashion sense rivals any drag queen's, led its list of five nominations.

Why we care: In several scenes Roberts shares the screen with the always compelling out actress Cherry Jones, playing one of the long-suffering townspeople whose righteous cause Erin champions.

(6) TRAFFIC

Why it's here: The critics' fave-rave among the Best Picture nominees, Steven Soderbergh's triptych view of the war on drugs scored five nominations.

Why we care: Best Supporting Actor nominee Benicio Del Toro plumbs the lower depths, including a seedy gay bar where he entraps dangerous Mexican assassin Francisco Flores (Clifton Collins Jr.) with mere steamy eye contact, and out actor Corey Spears pops up as one of the pill-popping preppies who lead Michael Douglas's daughter to perdition. (His character is listed in the credits as "Fucked Up Bowman.")

CHOCOLAT

Why it's here: Because the Miramax Oscar machine force-fed Lasse Hallstrom's treacly fantasy to the Academy, it squeezed out five nominations, including one for Best Picture.

Why we care: We don't. A sugar-coated fable about repression melting in the hand of the pleasure principle is old hat, and Chocolat stole the Best Picture slot that rightfully should have gone to Billy Elliot.

QUILLS

Why it's here: Geoffrey Rush's madcap turn as the imprisoned Marquis de Sade--grandly thumbing his nose at the censors of sexual deviance--earned the pic one of its three nominations.

Why we care: Tough break for gay screenwriter Doug Wright, whose adaptation of his own play didn't make the cut for an adapted screenplay nom, since without Wright's words, Rush would have had nothing to chew on but the scenery.

(7) CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON

Why it's here: Its Mandarin subtitles proved no barrier to entry as director Ang Lee's transcendent martial arts movie soared to a resounding 10 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film.

Why we care: Ever since his gay marital comedy, 1993's The Wedding Banquet, Lee has refused to acknowledge the boundaries of gender, sexuality, or ethnicity. And even though an unrequited hetero love story is burning bright in Tiger, its three battling women warriors--Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang, and Pei-pei Cheng as the memorably named Jade Fox--form a mighty menage a trois that hints at subterranean lesbian longings.

(8) SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

Why it's here: Supporting actor Willem Dafoe and his long-in-the-tooth makeup both earned nominations for bringing to life a real-live Nosferatu.

Why we care: German Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau (played on-screen by John Malkovich) was an even more colorful figure than the film suggests: The circumstances surrounding the gay director's death in a 1931 car crash--let's just say he and his Filipino valet didn't keep their eyes on the road--provide one of the most enduring bits of underground Hollywood lore.

POLLOCK

Why it's here: As artist Jackson Pollock and his long-suffering wife, Lee Krasner, Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden took home his-and-hers acting nominations.

Why we care: The battling Pollocks travel in a bohemian circle that includes at least one gay couple, Alfonso Ossorio (Eduardo Machado) and Ted Dragon (Moss Roberts), as well as flamboyant philanthropist Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan), who plays it like a real-life Auntie Mame.

Kilday is also a regular contributor to Premiere and Variety.