Lincoln leads Oscar race with 12 nominations

Highlights

• 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 on 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 favorites 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 Feb 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.
• Day-Lewis and Field both have two lead-acting Oscars already, he for My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood and she for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. A third Oscar for either would put them in rare company with previous triple winners Ingrid Bergman, Walter Brennan, Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Katharine Hepburn is the record-holder with four acting Oscars.
• An Oscar for Jones would be his second supporting-actor prize; he previously won for The Fugitive.
• Lincoln composer John Williams - whose five Oscars include three for the music of three earlier Spielberg films, Jaws, E.T. the Extra-terrestrial and Schindler's List - earned his 43rd nomination for best score, extending his all-time record in the category.
• The Oscars feature a best-picture field that ranges from five to 10 films depending on a complex formula of ballots from the 5,856 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
• Winners for the 85th Oscars will be announced Feb. 24 at a ceremony aired live on ABC from Hollywood's Dolby Theatre.
• Winners will be announced on February 24.
• The nominees are:
• Best Picture:
• Beasts Of The Southern Wild
• Silver Linings Playbook
• Zero Dark Thirty
• Lincoln
• Amour
• Life Of Pi
• Django Unchained
• Les Miserables
• Argo
• Best Actor:
• Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
• Daniel Day-Lewis Lincoln
• Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables
• Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
• Denzel Washington, Flight
• Best Actress:
• Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
• Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
• Emmanuelle Riva, Amour
• Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild
• Naomi Watts, The Impossible
• Best Director:
• Amour, Michael Haneke
• Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin
• Life of Pi, Ang Lee
• Lincoln, Steven Spielberg
• Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell
• Best Supporting Actor:
• Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
• Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
• Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook
• Alan Arkin, Argo
• Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
• Best Supporting Actress:
• Amy Adams The Master
• Sally Field, Lincoln
• Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
• Helen Hunt, The Sessions
• Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook