‘Benjamin Button’ leads Oscar nods

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.– One is a grand, sweeping epic, a dazzling technical achievement starring THE A-Lister of all A-Listers.

The other is a gritty tale, partly told in subtitled Hindi, with a tiny budget and no known stars that almost didn’t make it to theaters.

Now, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Slumdog Millionaire” share the spotlight with the most nominations heading into the 81st Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

“Benjamin Button,” which leads with 13 nominations, features Brad Pitt as a man aging in reverse, pining for the woman he’s always loved over an extraordinary lifetime.

Directed by David Fincher and running nearly three hours, it features eye-popping special effects that allow Pitt, People Magazine’s former sexiest-man-alive, to appear seamlessly as a hunched, shriveled old man.

“Slumdog,” with 10 nominations, is a heart-pounding drama about an orphan who rises from poverty in Mumbai to become the biggest winner ever on India’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Directed by Danny Boyle with visceral cinematography and fluid edits, it draws you into the squalor but ends with unexpected hope.

The contrast represents the cinematic extremes that appealed to Oscar voters this year, with pictures and performances large and small receiving equal consideration. (The other Best Picture nominees are “Milk,” “Frost/Nixon” and “The Reader.”) The biggest blockbuster of the year, “The Dark Knight,” got eight nominations but was shut out of the Best Picture.

Pitt, for example, is competing against previous Oscar winner Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in “Milk” and veteran Frank Langella as Richard Nixon in “Frost/Nixon.” Also in the Best Actor category are a couple of first-time nominees in independent movies:

Mickey Rourke as a grappler struggling to make a comeback in “The Wrestler” and in a surprise entry, longtime character actor Richard Jenkins as a lonely widower in “The Visitor.”

“I’ve been doing this long enough to know that expectations, they are the enemy,” Jenkins said. “I really didn’t think I would be nominated. It’s such an amazing year with incredible performances. I used to say, ‘Just my luck,’ but it was incredibly humbling.”

As for what he thinks will happen at the Feb. 22 ceremony at the Kodak Theatre, which he’s never attended before: “I think there’s this red thing you walk down, and then you go sit down and wait. Isn’t that how it works? I’m not sure.”

The Best Actress category also has a couple of women in tiny, stripped-down films who heard their names for the first time Thursday morning: Anne Hathaway as a recovering addict in “Rachel Getting Married” and Melissa Leo as an impoverished mother of two who turns to immigrant smuggling in “Frozen River.” They’re up against a few actresses who have just a bit more experience at the Academy Awards:
Angelina Jolie as a mother searching for her young son in “Changeling,” Kate Winslet as a former Nazi concentration camp guard in “The Reader” and Meryl Streep – the most honored actor in Oscar history with 15 nominations – as a viciously judgmental nun in “Doubt.”

“It’s really just so remarkable, really like a modern-day miracle,” said Leo, who got word of her nomination at the Sundance Film Festival, the same place the low-budget film got its start a year ago. “An inspiration to independent film, truly independent film, and the vision of a filmmaker (original screenplay nominee Courtney Hunt) being stuck to from script to screen.”