LOS ANGELES: Dark comedy Birdman and stylish crime caper The Grand Budapest Hotel topped the Oscars nominations list on Thursday with nine each, firing the starting gun on the home stretch of Hollywood’s awards race.

In second place was World War II code-breaking thriller The Imitation Game, with eight nominations. Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper and coming-of-age drama “Boyhood” each earned six nods.

The five films were all shortlisted for best picture, along with US civil rights drama Selma, Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything and jazz drumming in die hit Whiplash. The golden statuettes will be handed out on Feb 22 at the Dolby Theatre in downtown Hollywood.

For best actor, Birdman star Michael Keaton and Britain’s Eddie Redmayne, who portrayed Hawking in The Theory of Everything — both Golden Globes winners just a few days ago — are up against Steve Carell Foxcatcher, Bradley Cooper American Sniper and Benedict Cumberbatch ( The Imitation Game).

The best actress race includes two former Oscar winners — Marion Cotillard for Two Days, One Night and Reese Witherspoon ( Wild).

They will compete against Globes winner Julianne Moore (Still Alice), along with two British actresses and first-time nominees — Felicity Jones ( The Theory of Everything) and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl).

The makers of both Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Wes Anderson, are both in the race for best director along with Richard Linklater for Boyhood, Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher and Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game. Three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep meanwhile extended her record lead in nominations, scoring her 19th nod — this time for best supporting actress for musical fairytale romp Into The Woods.

ANISTON SNUBBED: There were of course notable absentees from the nominations list.

Nominees for the best director category (from left) Bennett Miller, Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, Morten Tyldum and Alejandro G. Inarritu.—Reuters

All of the nominees in the four acting categories are white — several commentators lamented that David Oyelowo, the Briton who played Martin Luther King Jr in best picture nominee Selma, was overlooked.

Selma director Ava DuVernay was also ignored, as was Friends star Jennifer Aniston, who had been tipped for her role in gritty drama Cake.

Angelina Jolie secured three nominations for her second directing foray, with World War II real-life drama Unbroken, but none of them were in the major categories. All the best picture nominees featured men as the central characters.

The Oscar nominees — chosen by the 6,000-plus members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — were revealed in a pre-dawn ceremony in Beverly Hills.

Voting for the 87th Oscars starts on February 6 and closes on Feb 17.

WIDE-OPEN RACE: This year’s crop of hotly-tipped movies is heavy on true stories: several of the films on the Oscars best picture shortlist were based on real-life events.

Nominees for best actress (from left) Marion Cotillard, Felicity Jones, Julianne Moore, Rosamund Pike and Reese Witherspoon

Among the historical figures depicted in those films are King ( Selma), astrophysicist Hawking (The Theory of Everything) and British mathematician Alan Turing (The Imitation Game).

The eagerly-awaited Oscars announcement came just four days after Boyhood emerged triumphant from the Golden Globes, winning best film and best director honours, along with a prize for best supporting actress Patricia Arquette, also an Oscar nominee.

Birdman— about a washed-up film actor (Keaton) trying to revive his career on stage — and The Theory of Everything, about Hawking’s descent into disability, each took home two Globes.

The Globes — for which Birdman had led nominations with seven nods — produced a few surprises, which injected some drama into the race to the Oscars.

My first caution to Globes winners: don’t get over-confident, said Variety awards editor Tim Gray, warning that the Globes are often a poor predictor of Oscars glory.

Possibly the biggest surprise of the Globes ceremony came when The Grand Budapest Hotel took home the prize for best comedy/musical film over Birdman.

The ‘Grand Budapest’ triumph throws something of a curveball into the Oscar race, wrote the Los Angeles Times.—AFP

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2015

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