OSCARS: 'Lincoln,' 'Life of Pi' lead nominees

BEVERLY HILLS — Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards were announced this morning by this year's Oscar (www.oscar.com) host, Seth MacFarlane, and actress Emma Stone. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln leads the list of nominees with recognition in 12 categories, including Best Picture, Film Editing (Michael Kahn), Music (John Williams, and Directing (Spielberg).

Ang Lee’s Life of Pi also has a strong presence with 11 nominations. The film is also a Best Picture contender, and was also recognized for Cinematography (Claudio Miranda), Directing (Lee), Film Editing (Tim Squyres), VFX, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.

Ben Affleck’s Argo received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture; but surprisingly he was left off the Best Director list. The film is also a contender in the Film Editing category (William Goldenberg), as well as for Music, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.

Receiving five nominations is director Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, including for Best Picture (Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin and Pilar Savone producers). Soundelux (Wylie Stateman) is recognized for the film’s Sound Editing, as is Robert Richardson for Cinematography.

  The Visual Effects category spans a number of genres, including superheroes, fairy tales and science fiction. Nominees include The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton and R. Christopher White), Life of Pi (Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott), Marvel's The Avengers (Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams and Dan Sudick), Prometheus (Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley and Martin Hill), and Snow White and the Huntsman (Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brennan, Neil Corbould and Michael Dawson).

ILM's Jeff White had this to say about his nomination: “Visual effects is such a team effort. The Avengers truly represents a lot of hard work on the part of many amazing people. It’s great to see so many good films nominated. It was a strong year for VFX and this being my first nomination, I feel very lucky.”

In the Animation category, there is a split between CG titles — Brave and Wreck-It Ralph — and stop motion techniques — 

Frankenweenie (Tim Burton), ParaNorman, and The Pirates! Band of Misfits (Peter Lord). "This is amazing," says Peter Lord. "We tried to do something a little different with The Pirates, in terms of tone and comedy, and it’s just brilliant that the Academy has responded to it in such a wonderful way."

Academy members from each of the branches vote to determine the nominees in their respective categories. In the Animated Feature Film and Foreign Language Film categories, nominees are selected by vote of multi-branch screening committees. All voting members are eligible to select the Best Picture nominees.

The Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, February 24, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and televised live on ABC. The following is a complete list of nominees:

Scott Millan, Greg P. Russell and Stuart Wilson