Dreamgirls becomes the first movie in the history of the Oscars of not being selected as the Best Picture despite bagging the highest number of nominations. The nominations for the 79 th Annual Academy Awards were announced yesterday by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President, Sid Ganis and former Oscar nominee, Salma Hayek. Babel, telling a globe-hopping story of cultural misunderstandings, will compete with crime drama.
The Departed, the Japanese-language war film Letters From Iwo Jima, the comedy flick Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen. The Golden Globe winner for Best actress, Helen Mirren ( The Queen) will compete with Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal), Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada), Kate Winslet (Little Children ) and Penelope Cruz (Volver).
The contestants for the Best Actor award includes Leonardo DiCaprio for Blood Diamond, Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson, Peter O'Toole for Venus, Will Smith for The Pursuit of Happyness and Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland . The Spanish-language fascist story Pan's Labyrinth was nominated not only for foreign language film but also for original screenplay, cinematography, art direction, makeup and original score.
The other movies contesting in the foreign language category includes After the Wedding ( Denmark), Days of Glory (Algeria), The Lives of Others ( Germany) and Water ( Canada). Let's see if Deepa Mehta's Water will make it at the Oscar!
