Oscars Snub, Celebrate Dreamgirls

Somebody had better keep an eye on Effie White.

The Dreamgirls character who famously blows her stack when she's dismissed from her chart-topping girl group presumably would not be pleased to know that her hit musical has been shut out of the Best Picture race at the 79th Annual Academy Awards.

Babel, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen and, in a major awards-season turnaround, Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, are the contenders for Oscar's top prize, per the nomination field announced Tuesday.

Effie White might be quieted to learn that Dreamgirls actually walked away with the most nominations of any film—eight—including one for her portrayer, Jennifer Hudson, and costar Eddie Murphy.

And Effie might be heartened to learn that, if nothing else, Dreamgirls made Oscar history, becoming the first film to lead the nomination pack without the benefit of a Best Picture nod.

Of course, Effie might lose it again, in a fit of either anger or confusion, once she drills down and figures out that aside from the supporting acting races and Best Song category, where Dreamgirls dominated with three of five nominations, her film was passed over in every other glamour category, including Best Director, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Babel is a more traditional top nominee, with its seven nods yielded largely from high-profile categories such as Best Picture, Best Director (Alejandro González Iñárritu), Best Original Screenplay (Iñárritu's 21 Grams and Amores Perros collaborator, Guillermo Arriaga) and Best Supporting Actress (Hollywood newcomers Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi).

The  Queen and the Spanish-language fable Pan's Labyrinth were the other top multiple nominees, with six each. (Get the complete list of contenders and our Oscar nominee photo gallery.)

After Dreamgirls, Brad Pitt, who was not nominated for Babel, and Jack Nicholson, who was not nominated for The Departed, were the other big snubees, unless you count Bobby, and, in turn, counted on mogul Harvey Weinstein to wrangle enough votes for a Best Picture nod.

Pitt's no-show in the Best Supporting Actor category doesn't let Angelina Jolie off the red carpet hook—at least not yet. Pitt was a producer on The Departed, and, pending a credits ruling by the Academy, could be a contender for the Best Picture Oscar, meaning he might just have to take the tight-lipped life partner out for another stroll before the pre-show press.

Elsewhere, Ryan Gosling and Jackie Earle Haley, an MMC alum and Bad News Bears alum, respectively, earned somewhat surprise acting nominations; Meryl Streep earned a record 14th acting nomination; Mel Gibson's Apocalypto earned a respectable three nominations; Borat's Sacha Baron Cohen earned a screenplay nod (but not an acting one), while perennial Oscar losers Martin Scorsese and Peter O'Toole each earned another chance to win—or lose.

Gosling, who drew raves from critics and fellow actors for his turn as a crack-addled teacher in the otherwise little-seen Half Nelson, is the youngest entry, at age 26, in the Best Actor category. (And if he wins, he'll be the youngest-ever Best Actor.)

The aptly named Gosling is up against relative old-timers Leonardo DiCaprio, 32, and Will Smith, 38, tapped for Blood Diamond and The Pursuit of Happyness, respectively; certifiably old old-timer O'Toole, 74, pulling in his eighth career Oscar nomination—and first since 1982's My Favorite Year—for Venus; and, Forest Whitaker, who's 45, and already the recipient of about that many awards for playing dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.

Aside from its mix of new and old-ish stars, the Best Actor field is notable in that there's not a previous Oscar winner in the bunch. Among its hopefuls, no one represents not being an Oscar winner better than O'Toole.

Should O'Toole fail to win again—and not even Lawrence of Arabia got him over the hump—he'll move out of a tie with old friend Richard Burton as Oscar's losingest acting nominee ever. (At least O'Toole will always have his honorary Oscar, presented in 2003.)

Streep, a Best Actress nominee, has lost nearly twice as many times as O'Toole, but she's also claimed two statuettes. To claim her third, she'll have to hope her icy portrayal of a magazine editor in The Devil Wears Prada freezes out Helen Mirren, unbeatable as yet for her pitch-perfect portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.

Streep will also have to overcome a personal Oscar drought that has stretched on for more than 23 years. Though it's impossible to tell the history of the Academy Awards without Streep, it's been impossible for Streep to win an Academy Award since 1983.

Rounding out the Best Actress race: Penélope Cruz (Volver), Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal) and Kate Winslet (Little Children).

The last time Haley, a Best Supporting Actor nominee for the domestic drama Little Children, appeared in an Oscar-contending movie Jimmy Carter was President. Now, the 45-year-old of former Breaking Away and Kelly Leak fame can cap a comeback run with a win of his own, provided his lauded turn as a child predator outpolls Murphy's showstopping performance as a James Brown-style headliner in Dreamgirls.

Other Supporting Actor contenders: Alan Arkin, as the advice-dispensing, heroin-snorting grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine; Djimon Hounsou, as the desperate father in Blood Diamond; and, giving his entourage something to cheer, Mark Wahlberg, as a cop in The Departed.

Haley, Murphy and Wahlberg are all first-time nominees; Arkin may well feel like a first-timer—the 72-year-old hasn't been up for a statuette since the 1960s.

In the Supporting Actress race, Hudson will look to give American Idol something new to brag about. The 25-year-old, who makes her film debut in Dreamgirls, will vie for the Oscar opposite Babel's Barraza and Kikuchi, Notes on a Scandal's Cate Blanchett and Little Miss Sunshine's titular contestant Abigail Breslin.

At age 10 years, 307 days come the Oscar ceremony, Breslin will have a chance to become the second-youngest Academy Award winner ever after Tatum O'Neal, who was 10 years, 148 days when she claimed her Best Supporting Actress trophy for Paper Moon at the 1974 show. Justin Henry, not yet nine when he competed for Best Supporting Actor for Kramer vs. Kramer, remains the youngest-ever acting nominee.

With Dreamgirls' Bill Condon having as much luck in the Best Director race as his film had in the Best Picture race (i.e., none), The Departed's Scorsese will try his notoriously poor Oscar luck—he's previously lost all seven times he's been up for an award—in the category opposite Babel's Iñárritu; The Queen's Stephen Frears; Iwo Jima's Eastwood, who pulled out big nominations for the Japanese-language war drama despite a paucity of previous awards-show wins and snubs from the Directors Guild and Producers Guild; and United 93's Paul Greengrass.

Greengrass' inclusion comes at the exclusion of Little Miss Sunshine's husband-and-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, and may well be the Academy's way of honoring an acclaimed 9-11 docudrama that played more gut-wrenching than uplifting, the latter being the most desirous of awards-season virtues.

In all, United 93 pulled in two nominations, including one for editing.

With Dayton and Faris on the sidelines, meanwhile, the Best Picture dreams of Little Miss Sunshine, last weekend's upset Producers Guild winner, would seem to have been dampened.

For one thing, Sunshine is the only Best Picture contender without a corresponding Best Director nomination. For another thing, the last film to claim the Best Picture Oscar without its director (or directors) being nominated was Driving Miss Daisy, nearly 17 long years ago.

Gibson didn't get a Best Director nod, much less a Best Picture nod for Apocalypto. But the bloody Mayan-language adventure was not ignored, either, despite its filmmaker's non-endearing "f--king Jews" rant from last summer. The movie earned nominations for makeup, sound editing and sound mixing.

The Academy didn't buy Cohen's Borat as an Oscar-worthy acting performance, but it did buy Cohen's plotted-out antics as an Oscar-worthy screenplay.

Cohen and his Borat cowriters will vie in the Adapted Screenplay category opposite the writers of Children of Men, The Departed, Little Children and Notes on a Scandal.

In another, less-contested year, Michael Arndt's Little Miss Sunshine, Arriaga's Babel and Peter Morgan's The Queen each might be considered the clear frontrunner for Original Screenplay. But not this year, and not with Pan's Labyrinth and Letters from Iwo Jima rounding out the field.

In the Animated Film category, the Golden Globe-winning Cars will look to lap Happy Feet and Monster House. Flushed Away, a critics' favorite, and Ice Age: The Meltdown, a popular hit, were among the 'toons that failed to draw sufficient support.

Among the feature-length documentaries, Al Gore will do battle with the enemies of Satan, via An Inconvenient Truth and Jesus Camp, respectively. Other nominees: Deliver Us from Evil, Iraq in Fragments and My Country, My Country.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, 2006's box-office champ, added to its haul with four nominations for technical achievement and art direction.

Other top earners, including X-Men: The Last Stand, The Da Vinci Code and, perhaps most surprisingly, Casino Royale, a favorite at the so-called British Oscars, were completely shut out of the nominations.

The early Oscar line from the gaming site PinnacleSports.com had The Departed as a slight favorite over Babel for Best Picture, Mirren and Whitaker as big favorites for Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively, the Dreamgirls duo of Murphy and Hudson as the picks to claim the supporting acting awards and Scorsese as the frontrunner for Best Director.

The 79th annual Academy Awards are scheduled to be presented Feb. 25 in Hollywood. Ellen DeGeneres will host the ABC telecast.

Get the complete list of Oscar nominees.