| Oscar-nominated actress Jennifer Lawrence and Tom Sherak, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, finish announcing the nominees for Best Actress at the 84th Academy Awards Nominations Announcement at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California, on Tuesday morning (Tuesday night in Manila). AFP PHOTO |
LOS ANGELES: Martin Scorsese’s lavish 3D adventure Hugo earned 11 Academy Award nominations on Tuesday morning (Tuesday night in Manila), just ahead of hotly-tipped black-and-white silent movie The Artist, which received 10 nods for Hollywood’s top awards.
Baseball movie Moneyball and veteran director Steven Spielberg’s equine epic War Horse each got six nods for the Oscars, which will be presented next month.
Meryl Streep received her 17th Oscar nomination for her performance as former British premier Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, while Brad Pitt and George Clooney are among those fighting it out for best actor.
The nominations for Hugo included one in the best picture category, where it is up against eight other movies including The Artist, which has been a favorite for the Oscars after a string of wins and nods in other awards shows.
Scorsese’s movie—his debut in 3D—is a visually rich tale set in 1930s Paris, about an orphan who lives in the walls of a train station and is obsessed with clock-making and early film pioneer Georges Melies.
The film stars British teenage actor Asa Butterfield in the title role, with Ben Kingsley as Melies and Borat and Bruno star Sacha Baron Cohen as a lugubrious station inspector.
Scorsese said that he was “deeply honored” by the nominations, and joked about the challenges he faced in making Hugo.
“Every picture is a challenge, and this one—where I was working with 3D, HD and Sacha Baron Cohen for the first time—was no exception,” he said, teasing the flamboyant star who acts with understated comedy in the movie.
The Artist has already been nominated for best film by the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and won the top prize from the Producers Guild of America (PGA) last week—both seen as key indicators of Oscar glory.
The film, a tribute to the silent movie era in which a non-talking star battles to save his career after it is torpedoed by the arrival of the “talkies,” also won the Golden Globe for best musical/comedy film on January 15.
The team behind the The Artist said that they felt “pure happiness” when their “ugly duckling” scooped 10 Oscar nominations.
“It’s complicated to start so low and to climb so high. It’s like a fairy tale for this film that at the start was seen as a handicapped film, deaf and dumb, an ugly duckling,” nominated director Michel Hazanavicius said.
Other movies nominated for best picture are The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life and War Horse.
The Artist star Jean Dujardin was nominated in the best actor category, where he is up against Clooney in The Descendants, Pitt in Moneyball, Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Demian Bechir in A Better Life.
Two-time Oscar winner Streep is among the best actress nominees for the latest tour de force in her long career, playing Thatcher both in her prime and dementia-shrouded old age.
Also shortlisted with her are Glenn Close for the cross-dressing film Albert Nobbs, Viola Davis for the civil rights drama The Help, Michelle Williams as screen icon Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn and Rooney Mara for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Up for best foreign language film are A Separation by Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, along with Footnote (Israel), In Darkness (Poland), Monsieur Lazhar (Canada), and Bullhead (Belgium).
The Oscars will be presented at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood on February 26.
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