CALIFORNIA, USA (AP) — The Civil War saga "Lincoln" leads the Academy
Awards with 12 nominations, including best picture, director for Steven
Spielberg and acting honours for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy
Lee Jones.
Also among the nine nominees for best picture Thursday: the old-age love
story "Amour"; the Iran hostage thriller "Argo"; the independent hit
"Beasts of the Southern Wild"; the slave-revenge narrative "Django
Unchained"; the musical "Les Miserables"; the shipwreck story "Life of
Pi"; the lost-souls romance "Silver Linings Playbook"; and the Osama bin
Laden manhunt chronicle "Zero Dark Thirty."
"Life of Pi" surprisingly ran second with 11 nominations, ahead of "Zero
Dark Thirty" and "Les Miserables," which had been considered potential
front-runners.
More surprising were snubs in the directing category, where three
favourites missed out: Ben Affleck for "Argo" and past Oscar winners
Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty" and Tom Hooper for "Les
Miserables."
Two-time winner Spielberg earned his seventh directing nomination, and
also in the mix are past winner Ang Lee for "Life of Pi" and past
nominee David O. Russell for "Silver Linings Playbook." The other slots
went to surprise picks who are first-time nominees: Michael Haneke for
"Amour" and Benh Zeitlin for "Beasts of the Southern Wild."
Chronicling Abraham Lincoln's final months as he engineers passage of
the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, "Lincoln" stars best-actor
contender Day-Lewis in a monumental performance as the 16th president,
supporting-actress nominee Field as the notoriously headstrong Mary Todd
Lincoln and supporting-actor prospect Jones as abolitionist firebrand
Thaddeus Stevens.
Joining Day-Lewis in the best-actor field are Bradley Cooper as a
psychiatric patient trying to get his life back together in "Silver
Linings Playbook"; Hugh Jackman as Victor Hugo's tragic hero Jean
Valjean in "Les Miserables"; Joaquin Phoenix as a Navy vet who falls in
with a cult in "The Master"; and Denzel Washington as a boozy airline
pilot in "Flight."
Nominated for best actress are Jessica Chastain as a CIA operative
hunting bin Laden in "Zero Dark Thirty"; Jennifer Lawrence as a troubled
young widow struggling to heal in "Silver Linings Playbook"; Emmanuelle
Riva as an ailing woman tended by her husband in "Amour"; Quvenzhane
Wallis as a spirited girl on the Louisiana delta in "Beasts of the
Southern Wild"; and Naomi Watts as a mother caught up in a devastating
tsunami in "The Impossible."
Along with Field, supporting-actress nominees are Amy Adams as a cult
leader's devoted wife in "The Master"; Anne Hathaway as an outcast
mother reduced to prostitution in "Les Miserables"; Helen Hunt as a sex
surrogate in "The Sessions"; and Jacki Weaver as an unstable man's
doting mom in "Silver Linings Playbook."
Besides Jones, the supporting-actor contenders are Alan Arkin as a wily
Hollywood producer in "Argo"; Robert De Niro as a football-obsessed
patriarch in "Silver Linings Playbook"; Philip Seymour Hoffman as a
dynamic cult leader in "The Master"; and Christoph Waltz as a genteel
bounty hunter in "Django Unchained."
"Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane, who will host the February 24
Oscars, joined Emma Stone to announce the Oscar lineup, and he scored a
nomination himself, original song for "Everybody Needs a Best Friend,"
the tune he co-wrote for his big-screen directing debut "Ted."
"That's kind of cool I got nominated," MacFarlane deadpanned at the announcement. "I get to go to the Oscars."
"Lincoln" is Spielberg's best awards prospect since his critical peak in
the 1990s, when he won best-picture and directing Oscars for
"Schindler's List" and a second directing Oscar for "Saving Private
Ryan." The 12 nominations for "Lincoln" matched Spielberg's personal
best on "Schindler's List," which won seven Oscars.
Spielberg's latest film could vault him, Day-Lewis and Field to new
heights among Hollywood's super-elite of multiple Oscar winners.
A best-picture win for "Lincoln" would be Spielberg's second, while
another directing win would be his third, a feat achieved only by Frank
Capra and William Wyler, who each earned three directing Oscars, and
John Ford, who received four.
"Lincoln" also was the ninth best-picture nominee Spielberg has
directed, moving him into a tie for second-place with Ford. Only Wyler
directed more best-picture nominees, with 13.
