Oscar best film and best director nominees

On Sunday the “crème de la crème” of the film industry gets together to celebrate the 85th Academy Awards. The Oscars will be handed out in the new Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Here are the nominees for Best Director and Best Picture: “Lincoln” has a total of 12 nominations, including best director for Steven Spielberg and best film. Daniel Day-Lewis is the hot favourite for the best actor honour for his incarnation of the great American president. The film “Life of Pi” has a total of 11 nominations, including best director for Ang Lee and best picture. Visually stunning and full of ideas, the film is based on the bestselling book of the same name. “Silver Linings Playbook,” has a total of eight nominations, including ones in all four acting categories, and best picture. David O.Russel is also up for best director. The film is about a well-meaning young man with bipolar disorder, and was written by Russell for his son, who also suffers from the condition. “Beasts of the Southern Wild” has a total of four nominations, including best picture and best director for first-timer Ben Zeitlin. In an isolated Louisiana swampland known as the Bathtub, young Hushpuppy and her father are part of a community that lives outside of the structure of modern society. When rising flood waters threaten the area, the young girl’s resourcefulness and lively imagination are called into play as the region’s residents face the approaching disaster. Austrian Director Michael Haneke is in the run for best director. “Amour” has a total of five nominations, including best picture. In the final months of her life, a retired music teacher and her husband of 60 years struggle with the debilitating effects of two strokes on both her health and her quality of life. As Georges cares for the increasingly unhappy Anne, the pair finds the nature of their life together irrevocably changed. 2013 has proved to be an unusual year for the Academy in the directing category, with the exclusion of “Argo” director Ben Affleck, who has won nearly every major directing award this season, including the top Directors Guild of America prize. The film has a total of 7 nominations and is the front-runner for the best picture. “Argo” is based on the true story of six Americans who take refuge in the Canadian embassy in Tehran during the 1979 hostage crisis. CIA agent Tony Mendez turns to Hollywood for help, and with a producer and makeup artist he devises a rescue mission that centers on the creation of a fake film production company scouting locations in Iran. One of the most talked-about pictures of the year “Django Unchained,” written and directed by Quentin Tarantino is also in the running for best picture. German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz buys a slave named Django and promises him his freedom once he has helped Schultz track down the criminals he is seeking. The film has a total of five nominations. “Les Miserables” a musical based on the Victor Hugo novel and stage show is directed by Tom Hooper and is nominated for eight awards, including best picture. In early 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned years earlier for stealing a loaf of bread, decides to break his parole following his release and assumes a new identity. “Zero Dark Thirty,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow has five nominations, including best picture. In the aftermath of 9/11, as the trail in the hunt for Osama bin Laden seems to grow cold, a determined CIA agent named Maya begins a painstaking, decade-long search for the al-Qaeda leader.