Benjamin Button tops Oscar nominations

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Paramount/Warner Bros co-venture The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button led the pack at the 81st annual Academy Award nominations announcement in Los Angeles with 13 nominations including best picture, best director and best actor for Brad Pitt. Only two films in Oscar history - All About Eve in 1950 and Titanic in 1997 - have been nominated 14 times.

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But perhaps the favourite is still Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight in the domestic market), Danny Boyle's Indian crowdpleaser which scored 10 nominations including picture, director and screenplay. The UK-originated film also won three nominations for Indian music superstar AR Rahman in original score and two song categories as well as cinematography, editing, sound editing and sound mixing.

Gus Van Sant's much liked Milk (Focus Features) restored its luster after being snubbed by the Golden Globes, winning eight nominations including best picture, director, screenplay, actor for Sean Penn and supporting actor for Josh Brolin. It is Penn's fifth nomination and Brolin's first.

Also taking eight nominations was Warner's blockbuster The Dark Knight but the comic book epic failed to score in picture or director categories, instead taking seven of its nods in technical categories and one for Heath Ledger in the supporting actor category. Ledger is only the sixth actor to be nominated posthumously after James Dean, Spencer Tracy, Peter Finch, Ralph Richardson and Massimo Troisi.

Kate Winslet, who won two Golden Globes recently for Revolutionary Road and The Reader, was nominated for best actress in a leading role for The Reader even though distributor The Weinstein Company was pitching her in the supporting category. The Reader had a triumphant morning, taking nominations for picture, screenplay and director Stephen Daldry who, remarkably, has now been nominated for each of his first three films - the other two being Billy Elliot in 2000 and The Hours in 2002.

For Scott Rudin, who pulled his name off The Reader, it was a somewhat bittersweet morning. His two films - Doubt and Revolutionary Road - didn't get nominated for best picture or director, although Doubt won five nods, four for performances and one for John Patrick Shanley's screenplay. The acting nominees are Meryl Streep for best actress, Philip Seymour Hoffman for best supporting actor and both Amy Adams and Viola Davis for best supporting actress.

Revolutionary Road was cited in only three categories including Michael Shannon for best supporting actor.

It is Streep's 15th Academy Award nomination, taking her record as most nominated actor into new territory. And it is 33 year-old Winslet's sixth nomination, making her the youngest actor to score six nominations. Bette Davis was 34 when she won her sixth nomination for Now Voyager in 1942.

The final best picture nominee is Universal's Frost/Nixon from Imagine Entertainment and Working Title Films which took five nominations including best picture, director for Ron Howard, screenplay for Peter Morgan and actor for Frank Langella.

In the foreign language category, the nominees are Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex from Germany, Laurent Cantet's The Class from France, Yojiro Takita's Departures from Japan, Gotz Spielmann's Revanche from Austria and Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir from Israel. The four films which failed to make the final five from the nine-title shortlist are 3 Monkeys from Turkey, Everlasting Moments from Sweden, The Necessities Of Life from Canada and Tear This Heart Out from Mexico.

Although Mike Leigh won a nomination for best original screenplay for Happy-Go-Lucky, lead actress Sally Hawkins didn't make the final five, despite multiple critics awards and a Golden Globe win earlier this month.

Other actors who didn't win Oscar favour were Ralph Fiennes, although his three supporting roles in In Bruges, The Duchess and The Reader, might have split the voters and Kristin Scott Thomas, considered a contender for her French film I've Loved You So Long.

And even though he had two films in the running this year, Clint Eastwood was shut out for Gran Torino and Changeling, even though his Changeling star Angelina Jolie won a best actress nomination.

Making the grade for the first time were two indie favourites - Richard Jenkins, nominated for best actor in The Visitor, and Melissa Leo, nominated for best actress for Frozen River.

Mickey Rourke, who won the Golden Globe for best actor, also made the grade although The Wrestler only scored one other nomination for Marisa Tomei's supporting performance. It is Tomei's third nomination.

The animated feature nominees were Bolt, Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E. The last won a further five nominations for original screenplay, music score, song ('Down To Earth' by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman), sound mixing and sound editing.

Documentary feature nominees were The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) directed by Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath, Encounters At The End Of The World from Werner Herzog, The Garden from Scott Hamilton Kennedy, Man On Wire from James Marsh and Trouble The Water from Tia Lessin and Carl Deal.

The studio with the most nominations was Paramount, including Paramount Vantage and DreamWorks releases, with a total of 22 nominations.

Warner Bros scored 21, not counting its involvement as a partner in Slumdog Millionaire, while Universal and Focus had 20.