Canadians are among Oscar nominees

Two National Film Board of Canada filmmakers are among the Canadian nominees for this year's Academy Awards.

Chris Landreth, the director of Ryan, was nominated in the animated-short category, while Hubert Davis, who directed Hardwood, received a nod in the category for short documentaries.

Davis learned of his nomination when he clicked on the Academy Awards site Tuesday.

"It was like the longest scroll-down in the history of scroll-downs, this morning when I got on the internet," he said a reference to his anticipation, not the speed of the computer.

Davis is a first-time nominee. The subject of his 29-minute film is his father, Mel Davis, who played for the Harlem Globetrotters in the 1970s alongside basketball greats like Meadowlark Lemon, Fred "Curly" Neal and Geese Ausbie.

Davis, who works as a commercial editor for a company in Toronto, says there were "a lot of tears and a lot of shrieking" when he shared the news of his nomination with his family and friends.

"It felt a bit like a dream, really, like it wasn't happening," he said, adding that some people he talked to didn't believe at first that he was up for an Oscar. They assumed he was talking about some sort of student Oscar or a lesser technical award, so he had to convince them he had indeed been nominated for a "legitimate" Academy Award.

For Landreth, who has been nominated once before, the emotional reaction to hearing the news of his nomination was just as strong.

"It is really humbling, I will say that. It is quite overwhelming," he said from Park City, Utah, where he is attending the Sundance Film Festival.

Landreth calls his film, which runs 14 minutes, an "animated documentary." He used computer-generated imagery to tell the story of Ryan Larkin, who himself worked for the NFB in the 1960s and 1970s. Once a promising animator, Larkin now panhandles on the streets of Montreal.

"A lot of people have had a very emotional reaction to the film. It does tell a story on one level that is tragic, although there are many other levels, it's not just that," Landreth said.

Other nominees with connections to Canada include Annette Bening, who was nominated for her performance in the Canadian production Being Julia, about a British theatre actress in the 1930s who copes with middle age by taking a younger lover.

The film Sideways, which follows two friends as they embark on a wine-tasting tour in Northern California before one of them gets married, received a nod for best picture. Canada's Sandra Oh is among the members of the film's ensemble cast.

As well, Canadian screenwriter Paul Haggis was nominated for adapting the screenplay to Clint Eastwood's boxing drama Million Dollar Baby.

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Landreth says that the old clich that it's an honour just to be nominated for an Oscar is true.

"They are going to be tough competition altogether," he said of the other animated shorts that are nominated alongside Ryan.

Landreth got his first nomination in 1996, for a film called The End. He says he doesn't want to tempt fate this time around by thinking too much about winning, and he will speak only in broad terms about the kinds of doors that an Oscar nomination can open for a filmmaker.

"For me, personally, I won't speculate as to what this will lead to. In general, it does seem to tend to lead to a lot of people coming forward and saying 'Hey, why don't you do this new project with us?'"

A first-time director, Davis has not seen the films he will be competing against, but he says from what he has read he believes the field to be a strong one. He adds that watching the other nominated docs could be a risky prospect.

"I might realize then that I don't stand a chance, so I have to take what I can get right now," he joked.

In Davis's view, getting an Oscar nomination is different from any other honour. He says the nod from the academy brings with it "a certain stamp of approval" for the craftsmanship he put into his project, which was largely inspired by Hoop Dreams, the landmark 1994 basketball documentary.

For his part, Landreth says he will concentrate on keeping his cool when he attends the Oscar ceremony, which takes place Feb. 27 in Los Angeles.

"Just try to keep sane, try to keep calm. That's what it's about," he said of his emotional strategy for the big night.