BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) -- Martin Scorsese's Paris adventure " Hugo" leads the Academy
Awards with 11 nominations, among them Best Picture and the latest Best Director
slot for the Oscar-winning filmmaker.
The nominations set up a Best Picture showdown between the top films at the
Golden Globes: Best Musical or Comedy recipient "The Artist" and Best Drama
winner "The Descendants."
"The Artist" ran second with 10 nominations, among them writing and directing
nominations for French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, a Best Actor honor for Jean Dujardin and a Best Supporting Actress slot
for Berenice Bejo.
Because of a rule change requiring films to receive a certain number of
first-place votes, the Best Picture field has only nine nominees rather than the
10 that were in the running the last two years.
Dujardin, who won the Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy as a
silent-era star whose career goes kaput with the arrival of talking pictures,
will be up against Globe dramatic actor winner George Clooney for "The Descendants," in which the
Oscar-winning superstar plays a dad trying to hold his Hawaiian family together
after a boating accident puts his wife in a coma.
Other Best Actor contenders are: Demian Bichir as an immigrant father in "A
Better Life"; Gary Oldman as British spymaster George Smiley in
"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"; and Brad Pitt as Oakland A's General Manager Billy
Beane in "Moneyball."
Globe winners Meryl Streep (Best Actress in a
Drama, for her role as Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady") and Michelle Williams (Best Actress in a Musical or
Comedy, for her role as Marilyn Monroe in "My Week With Marilyn") scored Oscar nominations
for Best Actress.
Two-time Oscar winner Streep padded her record as the most-nominated actress,
raising her total to 17 nominations, five more than Katharine Hepburn and Jack
Nicholson, who are tied for second place.
Streep went two-for-four on her first nominations, winning Best Supporting
Actress for 1979's "Kramer vs. Kramer" and Best Actress for 1982's "Sophie's
Choice." But she has lost her last 12 times, and the Globe win for her spot-on
personification of Thatcher looks like her best chance yet to break that losing
streak.
Along with Streep and Williams, Best Actress nominees are: Glenn Close as a 19th-century Irishwoman
masquerading as a male butler in "Albert Nobbs"; Viola Davis as a black maid going public with
tales of white Southern employers in "The Help"; and Rooney Mara as a traumatized,
vengeful computer genius in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."
