New Line Cinema’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ruled supreme when the Orange British Academy Film Awards winners were announced Sunday. Peter Jackson’s trilogy ender picked up five awards including Best Film and the public vote for Film of the Year.
While Jackson lost the David Lean Award for Achievement in Directing to Master and Commander helmer Peter Weir, he did snag the prize for Adapted Screenplay, along with fellow King scripters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. The third Rings installment was also honored with BAFTAS for Special Visual Effects (Joe Letteri, Jim Rygiel, Randall William Cook and Alex Funke) and Cinematography (Andrew Lesnie).
The award for Short Animation went to the stop-motion effort Jojo in the Stars by Sue Goffe and Marc Craste. The film beat out Oscar nominee Nibbles by Chris Hinton and Ron Diamond. The also-rans were Dad’s Dead by Maria Manton and Chris Shepherd, Dear Sweet Emma by John Cernak and Plumber by Randi Yaffa, Andy Knight and Richard Rosenman.
Twentieth Century Fox’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which is up for several Oscars including Best Visual Effects, also made waves at the BAFTAS. The seafaring adventure flick won four awards, including Production Design (William Sandell), Costume Design (Wendy Stites) and Sound (Richard King, Doug Hemphill, Paul Massey and Art Rochester).
For a full list of 2004 BAFTA winners, visit www.bafta.org.
