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Show THE NATION Oscar voters choose to honor love and humor S..nPenn "ONd Man Welldtlg" H ,, 'I AL~ ' p ' -..'.-,, =~s.1::1,ySusan Sar11ndon "Dead Man Wa/klno" Elleabelh Shue 1.savlng Las V9""s" Sharon Stone "Casino" ~ M adison County' [) i J'<• Cr O I ChrlaNoonan 'Babe" Me1Glb8on 'Bta!/81HMJ1" BEVERLY HILLS, CaHf. (AP) t Oscar voters chose movies of heroism and humor like "' Braveheart and Babe as bestpicture nominees yesterday, while confining dark and disturbing films like Leaving Las Vegas and Dead Man Walking to acting and directing categories. Braveheart, the Scottish war fable starring Mel Gibson in a kilt, dominated with a surprising 10 nominations, including best picture and best director for Gibson. However, most of its nominations came in the lessglamorous technical categories such as sound and makeup. The other best-picture nominees were A pollo 13, Babe, Sense and Sensibility and The Postman. " I do believe that the American public has plenty of darkness to deal with ... and it's probably nice to go into a film and come out feeling happy," said Kathleen Quinlan, nominated for supporting actress for her depiction of astronaut Jim Lovell's wife in Apollo 13. Trailing Braveheart with the ,.,. most nominations overall was Apollo 13, with nine. Babe, about a talking pig who thinks he's a sheepdog, and Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's 1811 romance, got seven apiece. The Postman, an Italian film about a mailman enchanted by poetry, received five. Gibson was in the middle of a take for his new movie Ransom when an assistant flashed 10 thumbs and fingers. Tom Hanks, winner of the last two best-actor Oscars - for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump failed to earn a third consecutive nomination in that category for Apollo 13. Every one of the supporting acting nominees was a first-time Oscar selection. The supporting actor picks were James Cromwell in Babe, Ed Harris in Apollo 13, Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys, Tim Roth in Rob Roy and Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects. Joan Allen was nominated for best supporting actress for Nixon as were Quinlan for Apollo 13, Mira Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite, Mare Winningham for Georgia and Kate Winslet for Sense and Sensibility. U.S. DIGEST HOLLYWOOD VETERAN FOUND DEAD: Martin Balsam, a veteran Hollywood actor who won an Oscar for A Thousand Clowns and appeared in scores of films starting · with On the Waterfront, was found dead yesterday morning in his Rome hotel room. He was 76. The cause of death was not immediately clear. Balsam appeared in the movies Twelve Angry Men, Mar;orie Morningstar, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Tora! Tora! Tora! and All The President's Men . Martin Balsam GRAMM TO QUIT REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE, GOP SOURCES SAY: Battered by back-to-back defeats in Iowa and Louisiana, Texas Sen. Phil Gramm called top supporters around the country last night and told them he would quit the Republican presidential race, GOP sources said.Gramm planned an afternoon announcement today in Washington.His departure would leave an eight-man GOP field, with a week to go before the New Hampshire primary. Bob Dole eked out a victory in Iowa's caucuses Monday while Pat Buchanan gloated after a solid and surprising second-place showing. DOCTORS CREATING GELS TO HELP WOMEN FEND OFF AIDS: A cousin of the healthy bacteria found in yogurt helps women fight off vaginal infections naturally - and now doctors are trying to harness these b.ugs to protect against the AIDS virus. They are trying to create a gel or cream that a woman could insert into her vagina before sexual intercourse to kill the HIV virus in case her partner had it. AIDS researchers said yesterday the need for these "vaginal microbicides" is huge because AIDS is skyrocketing among heterosexual women worldwide. - I :THE WORLD Ii ---------------Crews make headway in rescue efforts TOKYO (AP) - Work crews in northern Japan finally made headway today in blasting to rubble a giant rock that had crushed a highway tunnel. But it may still take days of digging to reach a trapped bus and its occupants. The rescue drama has captured Japan's attention since Saturday, when a slab of mountain the size of a 20-story building peeled free and crushed the seaside tunnel, trapping a bus with 19 aboard and a car with one person inside. Today' s blast, the fourth attempt to topple or blow up the roc·k, reduced the boulder to a huge pile of loose debris and sent two big chunks rolling into the ocean. Power shovels were waiting at bottom of slope to begin clearing a way to the top of the tunnel. Officials were surveying the scene to decide whether a final blast might be necessary before digging could begin. Rescuers at the scene, near a remote fishing village 550 miles north of Tokyo, had feared that digging through the tunnel itself would trigger another collapse, so they spent two days trying to topple the rock into the sea. Failing in that effort, they focused instead on knocking it into pieces that could be cleared away. I WORLD DIGEST SERBS DENOUNCE TRANSFER OF WAR CRIMES SUSPECTS TO fflE HAGUE: A Serb leader warned yesterday that NATO and the Bosnian government risked a dangerous backlash by sending two Bosnian Serbs off to a war crimes court. A worried NATO shut its liaison office in the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale. Peace efforts stumbled further yesterday as German diplomats failed to resolve sharp Muslim-Croat differences over the divided city of Mostar. YELTSIN STILL TRAILING COMMUNIST RIVAL IN POLLS: As he prepares to reveal his re-election plans, new opinion polls suggest President Boris Yeltsin lags far behind his Communist rival and has little public support for the war in secessionist Chechnya. Polls released yesterday indicate, however, that Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov could be defeated by Grigory Yavlinksy, a young, Western-oriented reformer. This week marks the start in earnest of the race for the Russian presidency, the post that wields real control in this country of 148 million people spread across 11 time zones from Europe to the Pacific Ocean. A flock of Japanese media stand by at the entrance of the Toyohama tunnel in Yoichi city as workers are making another attempt to blast off the giant boulder at the other side of the tunnel in Furubira, northern Japan. Meanwhile, questions were growing over safety standards for tunnels like this one. Japan's Kyodo News reported Wednesday that 18 months ago, not far from the accident site, another rock twice as big as this one plunged down from a mountainside. WARNER MOVIE COMPLEX AND THEME PARK PROPOSED FOR LONDON: Saying it aims to bolster the British film industry, a British TV station has teamed up with the American media group Time Warner to propose building a film and television complex with a theme park in northwest London. The $344 million complex on more than 150 acres on the western outskirts of London would be called Warner Brothers Movie World and showcase Loony Tunes characters and movie heroes like Batman. It would have film and TV studios, theme rides and stage shows based on English and American films and characters - plus a history of the British cinema. |