Chicago is Oscar's kind of town.

The razzly-dazzly murder-minded musical topped the list of nominations Tuesday for the 75th Academy Awards, kicking up 13 nods, including Best Picture, Best Director for Broadway vet Rob Marshall (in his movie-directing debut) and acting nods for dueling singing-and-dancing murderesses Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones, jailhouse matron Queen Latifah and cinematic everyman John C. Reilly as the story's put-upon cuckold.

The only major MIA from the Chicago Oscar roster was Golden Globe winner Richard Gere, who plays the film's tap-dancing slickster laywer. He failed to tally a nom in the Best Actor category.

Chicago's 13 nods ties for second all-time, behind All About Eve and Titanic. It's bidding to become the first musical to win Best Picture since Oliver! in 1968.

Competing with the Windy City contingent will be the Big Apple posse in the form of Martin Scorsese's epic Gangs of New York, which mustered 10 nods, including Best Picture, Best Director for the long dissed Scorsese (will this be his year?) and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis.

Up against Chicago and Gangs in the Best Picture race: the time-hopping Virginia Woolf drama The Hours (featuring the high-octane actress triumvirate of Nicole "The Nose" Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep), Roman Polanski's semiautobiographical escape-from-the-Nazis effort The Pianist and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which has a slim shot of becoming only the second sequel to win the top Oscar. (The other was 1974's Godfather, Part II.)

Aside from Gere's snub, the biggest surprise was Streep not snagging a Best Actress nod for her work in The Hours, as a party planner on the verge of a breakdown. Streep was expected to pull a twofer and get nominations for both her lead work in The Hours and her supporting role in Adaptation. Julianne Moore, however, did double her pleasure, snagging nominations in the Best Actress (Far from Heaven) and Best Supporting Actress (The Hours) races.

Still, Streep can't be too unhappy--her nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Adaptation represented a major milestone. The two-time Oscar winner had been tied with Katharine Hepburn for most career nominations in the acting categories, with 12. Streep now has 13. Also moving up the career list was Jack Nicholson. Already Oscar'd three times, Nicholson racked up his 12th overall nod for Best Actor, for his understated turn as a frazzled midwestern widower in About Schmidt; if he wins, he'll tie Hepburn's record four Academy Awards. And legend Paul Newman notched his 10th career nomination, but his first in a supporting role, for playing a grizzled gangster in Road to Perdition. (One of Newman's nods came for producing 1968 Best Picture contender Rachel, Rachel.)

Nicholson will face off against Day-Lewis, The Quiet American's Michael Caine (a two-time Best Supporting Actor winner gunning for his first lead acting statuette), Adaptation's twin-playing Nicolas Cage and a relative newcomer, The Pianist's Adrien Brody.

With Streep AWOL from the Best Actress rundown, the statuette will be contended by Golden Globe winners Kidman and Zellweger, Moore and two moderate surprise nominees, Salma Hayek for essaying monobrowed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and Diane Lane, who steamed things up as an adulteress wife in Unfaithful.

Newman and Reilly (who also costarred in The Hours and Gangs of New York) will face off with Golden Globe winner Chris Cooper for his scene-swiping turn as an orchid-poaching oddball in Adaptation, Ed Harris for his turn as an AIDS-stricken poet in The Hours and Christopher Walken for playing Leonardo DiCaprio's daddy in Catch Me If You Can.

Up for Supporting Actress: Streep, Moore, Zeta-Jones, Latifah and About Schmidt's Kathy Bates.

Fresh off his Golden Globe win, Scorsese will try to snap his 0-for-4 Oscar mark in the Best Director slate. He's up against another storied but statuetteless Hollywood vet, Polanski, along with a couple of stage directors gone celluloid--Chicago's Marshall and The Hours' Stephen Daldry. The eyebrow-raising fifth slot is filled by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, whose Talk to Her was not submitted by Spain for Best Foreign-Language Film consideration.

Almodóvar also registered a Best Original Screenplay nod. He'll square off against the Gangs gang of Jay Cocks, Steve Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, Far from Heaven's Todd Haynes, My Big Fat Greek Wedding's Nia Vardalos (the sole nod to the year's biggest box-office shocker) and Y Tu Mamá También's brotherly tandem of Carlos and Alfonso Cuarón. (Like Almodóvar, the Y Tu Mamá nod is seen as a make-good--the critically hailed film, eligible in the foreign-language category last year, was passed over by Mexico.)

Meanwhile, another brotherly tandem of sorts leads the Best Adapted Screenplay race. Both Charlie Kaufman and fictional twin Donald were nominated for Adaptation. As far as we know, neither Bill Condon nor David Hare got an assist from a make-believe sib for their adaptions of, respectively, Chicago and The Hours, both of which were nominated, as were Ronald Harwood's script for The Pianist and Peter Hedges and Chris and Paul Weitz's take on About a Boy. (If the Kaufmans win, the Academy says it will only present one trophy, engraved with Charlie's name, at the Oscar ceremony.)

Also making bids for Academy Awards glory: Michael Moore, whose polarizing Bowling for Columbine is up for Best Documentary Feature and the late, great cameraman Conrad Hall. Hall, who died last month of cancer, received a posthumous nod for his Road to Perdition work.

Disney is well represented in the Best Animated Feature category, snagging three of the five slots with Lilo & Stich, Treasure Planet and the Japanese import Spirited Away. DreamWorks' Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Fox's Ice Age fill out the category. (Despite all the blather about how CGI animation is going to usurp traditional hand-drawn 'toons, Ice Age is the only all-digital contender.)

And here's a phrase we never thought we'd write: Eminem picked up his first Oscar nomination, as a songwriter, for "Lose Yourself" from his 8 Mile soundtrack. He's up against a couple of rock icons--U2 ("The Hands That Built America," Gangs of New York), Paul Simon ("Father and Daughter," The Wild Thornberrys Movie)--as well as the Broadway team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, who picked up a nod for their tacked-on Chicago song "I Move On." Rounding out the Best Song category is the tune "Burn It Blue," from Frida.

Meanwhile, two subplots to play out come Oscar night involve a couple of notable no-show possibilities. Polanski, up for directing honors, is a still a fugitive for a 1978 statutory rape rap in California and will likely be MIA from the festivities. And Peter O'Toole, selected earlier this month as a recipient of an Honorary Oscar, has indicated he won't be around to collect, because he sees the award as a consolation prize.

Aside from the boffo showings by Chicago and Gangs, The Hours clocked in with nine total nominations, and The Pianist hauled in seven. The Lord of the Rings, whose first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring, led the way last year with 13 nods, saw its second episode, The Two Towers, tally six nominations, mostly in technical categories. Frida and Road to Perdition also totaled six apiece.

Gere and Streep were easily the biggest snubs, but they weren't alone. Many had considered Dennis Quaid a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor for his career-remaking role in Far from Heaven. His costar Patricia Clarkson was also blanked in the Supporting Actress race, as was White Oleander's Michelle Pfeiffer. Frida's Alfred Molina had his Oscar dreams dashed, too.

Leonardo DiCaprio failed to register for either Gangs or Catch Me If You Can, and neither did Academy fave Tom Hanks for Road to Perdition or Catch Me. Both those films, considered long shots for a Best Picture nod, failed to see such a nomination materialize. Other would-be Best Picture candidates--like About Schmidt, Adaptation and Far from Heaven--also came up empty in that category.

Likewise, About Schmidt's Golden Globe-winning duo of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor were skipped over for Best Adapted Screenplay. Best Director hopefuls like Payne, Adaptation's Spike Jonze, Two Towers' Peter Jackson, Road to Perdition's Sam Mendes and perennial player Steven Spielberg (who helmed both Catch Me and Minority Report last year) won't have to worry about renting tuxes.

Spider-Man, the top-grossing flick of 2002, didn't exactly wow the Academy types. The web-slinger netted just two nominations, for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.

Most Oscar categories are whittled down by specific wings of the 5,600-member Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All members are eligible to vote for Best Picture nominees, and the full Academy gets to weigh in on the final Oscar ballot.

The diamond anniversary Academy Awards, hosted by Steve Martin, will air live from Hollywood's Kodak Theater on ABC, March 23, at 8:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. PT. E!'s all-day live pre-Oscar coverage begins at 7 a.m. ET/4 a.m. PT.

Here's a quick look at the major races:

Best Picture: Chicago Gangs of New York The Hours The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers The Pianist Best Actor: Adrien Brody, The Pianist Nicolas Cage, Adaptation Michael Caine, The Quiet American Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt Best Actress: Salma Hayek, Frida Nicole Kidman, The Hours Diane Lane, Unfaithful Julianne Moore, Far from Heaven Renée Zellweger, Chicago Best Supporting Actor: Chris Cooper, Adaptation Ed Harris, The Hours Paul Newman, Road to Perdition John C. Reilly, Chicago Christopher Walken, Catch Me If You Can Best Supporting Actress: Kathy Bates, About Schmidt Julianne Moore, The Hours Queen Latifah, Chicago Meryl Streep, Adaptation Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago Best Director: Stephen Daldry, The Hours Roman Polanski, The Pianist Rob Marshall, Chicago Pedro Almodóvar, Talk to Her Martin Scorsese, Gangs of New York Best Original Screenplay: Far from Heaven Gangs of New York My Big Fat Greek Wedding Talk to Her Y Tu Mamá También Best Adapted Screenplay: About a Boy Adaptation Chicago The Hours The Pianist Best Foreign-Language Film: El Crimen del Padre Amaro, Mexico Hero, China The Man Without a Past, Finland Nowhere in Africa, Germany Zus & Zo, The Netherlands Best Animated Feature: Ice Age Lilo & Stitch Spirt: Stallion of the Cimarron Spirited Away Treasure Planet

Complete list of Oscar nominations