80th annual Oscar nominees

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) last Tuesday released the final list of nominees for the 80th annual Academy Awards. The Coen brothers' violent thriller 'No Country for Old Men' and Paul Thomas Anderson's grim drama 'There Will Be Blood' have picked up eight nominations including one for Best Picture and one for Directing.

Joe Wright's British period romance 'Atonement' and Tony Gilory's legal thriller 'Michael Clayton' have also been nominated for the Best Picture along with Jason Reitman's comedy 'Juno'. The best foreign language film nominations include Austria's 'The Counterfeiters', Poland's 'Katyn', Kazakhstan's 'Mongol' and Russia's '12'.

Among the other nominations, Performance by an actor in a leading role George Clooney in "Michael Clayton", Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood", Johnny Depp in "Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street", Tommy Lee Jones in "In the Valley of Elah" and Viggo Mortensen in "Eastern Promises". Performance by an actress in a leading role; Cate Blanchett in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age", Julie Christie in "Away from Her", Marion Cotillard in "La Vie en Rose", Laura Linney in "The Savages" and Ellen Page in "Juno".

For the third year in a row, ILM pulled in two of the three nomination spots with 'Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'. Skywalker Sound also dominated the sound nominations taking three of the five slots in Sound Editing for their work on 'There Will Be Blood', 'Transformers' and 'Ratatouille', which also received another nomination in the Sound Mixing category.

Ninety eight-year-old production designer, Robert Boyle will receive an honorary Oscar for his life-long career and his valuable works on films such as 'North by Northwest' and 'Fiddler on the Roof'. Academy members selected the nominees in their respective branches, with the exception of the Animated Feature Film and Foreign Language Film categories, in which nominations were selected by vote of multi-branch screening committees.

All voting members are eligible to select the Best Picture nominees. Ballots were mailed to the 5,829 voting members in late December and were returned directly to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the international accounting firm, for tabulation. Official screenings of all pictures with one or more nominations will begin this weekend for members at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Screenings also will be held at the Academy's Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood and in London, New York and the Bay Area. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2007 will be presented on February 24, 2008, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood.