Independents' Day

There were the richly deserving, such as Clint Eastwood's three Oscar nominations for Unforgiven and Michelle Pfeiffer's one for Love Field. But if there was a message in the 65th annual Academy Awards nominations, it was that bigger movies aren't always better. Two low-budget independent films were among the top nomination grabbers: nine to the Merchant-Ivory drama Howards End and six to maverick Miramax Films' mystery The Crying Game, including Best Picture chances for each. In the crucial Best Director category, indies snagged two nominations, including one to Robert Altman for his savage dissection of Hollywood duplicity in The Player. Hollywood studios spent mightily to push a few big-budget pictures with Oscar apparently written all over them: Warner's Malcolm X, Fox's Hoffa and TriStar's Chaplin. But those movies got only seven nominations. Tiny Miramax's total haul of 12 nominations easily trumped studio giants TriStar, Universal and Fox, which had seven each.