Academy Award Nominations Announced: Cate Blanchett Up for Two Oscars; Atonement Stars Overlooked

Cate Blanchett was the big "winner" of the pre-Oscar-ceremony hype machine when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences anounced the Oscar nominations for the best of the 2007 year. Blanchett was nominated in both the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories for playing tow real people, Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Bob Dylan in I'm Not Here. Blanchett, who was nominated in 1999 for playing the samse character in Elizabeth, was earlier nominted for Golden Globe Awards for both roles, taking home the gold for assaying Dylan. She is, along with Bing Crosby and Al Pacino, one of the fe people to be nominated twice for playing the same role in two different movies.

The great surprise of this year's Oscar season is the lack of acting nominations for the two leads of the highly praised British film Atonement, which was nominated as Best Picture. Both Keira Knightley, who had been nominated for Best Actress in 2006 for Pride and Prejudice, and her co-star were shut-out of acting awards, as was the film's director, Joe Wright. It is highly unusual for a Best Picture nominee not to cop at least one major acting nomination, particularly since this is a drama, the success of which depends on the acting of its stars.

It was if Ralph Finnes and were not nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress for eventual Best Picture winner, which would be unthinkable.

Tommy Lee Jones was a surprising nominee for In the Valley of Elah, while the superb American actress Laura Linney scored her third nomination for The Savages. Linney's co-star, Oscar-winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman, had gotten the awards buzz for his performance in The Savages, but had to settle for a Best Supporting actor nod for Charlie Wilson's War.

Hoffman's War co-stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts and his director, Mike Nichols, surprisingly were overlooked for Oscar nominations, as was screenwriter.