AFP/Los Angeles

Steven Spielberg’s taut political drama Lincoln won the Oscars election yesterday to secure 12 nominations for the Academy Awards, the climax of Hollywood’s annual prizes season.
Taiwan-born Ang Lee’s visually stunning 3D adventure Life of Pi, based on the novel by Yann Martel, earned 11 nods from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, ahead of the Oscars ceremony on February 24.
Both movies are nominated for the coveted best film prize, along with dark comedy Silver Linings Playbook and musical Les Miserables, which each earned eight nominations, and Iran hostage drama Argo with seven.
Lincoln star Daniel Day-Lewis was nominated for best actor, as expected, against Hugh Jackman in Les Miserables, Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook, Joaquin Phoenix in The Master and Denzel Washington for Flight.
Best actress nominees are Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook, Emmanuelle Riva in Amour, Naomi Watts in The Impossible and Quvenzhane Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild.
“Congratulations. You five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein,” Oscars host Seth MacFarlane joked, referring to the veteran Hollywood producer whose influence in Tinseltown is legendary.
The Oscars nominations list, presented in the pre-dawn hours in Tinseltown, included a few surprises.
While Argo and Osama bin Laden manhunt film Zero Dark Thirty were each nominated for best picture, directors Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow - who had been widely seen as shoo-ins in their category - were snubbed.
The best supporting actor race features five Oscar winners, while in the best actress race, the oldest-ever nominee, 85-year-old Frenchwoman Riva, will be facing off against the youngest, nine-year-old Wallis.
Beyond best film, Lincoln earned nods for best director for Spielberg, best actor for Day-Lewis for his portrayal of the American president and best supporting actor for Tommy Lee Jones as abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens.
Lincoln also garnered top nominations for the Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild of America and Britain’s BAFTA awards in the run-up to the Oscars announcement.
Its British-Irish star Day-Lewis will be vying to win a record third best actor Oscar, after winning the accolade in 1990 for My Left Foot and in 2008 for There Will Be Blood.
Life of Pi, about an Indian boy cast adrift with a Bengal tiger, will be Lee’s third bid for Oscars glory after a 2001 nod for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and a best director 2006 win for Brokeback Mountain.
The best film race features nine films: Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty.
Up for best supporting actor are Jones for Lincoln, Alan Arkin for Argo, Robert De Niro for Silver Linings Playbook, Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master and Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained.
Best director nominees are Spielberg, Lee, Michael Haneke for Amour, Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild and David O Russell for Silver Linings Playbook.