`Dreamgirls' and `Babel' woo Oscar

The crowd-pleasing musical Dreamgirls led Academy Awards contenders yesterday with eight nominations, but was shut out in the best picture category.

The sweeping ensemble drama Babel was close behind with seven, including best picture and acting nominations for two newcomers to US audiences, Mexico's Adriana Barraza and Japan's Rinko Kikuchi. The gothic fairytale Pan's Labyrinth had six nominations, including best foreign-language film.

Other picture nominees were the bloody crime saga The Departed, the World War II spectacle Letters From Iwo Jima, the road trip comedy Little Miss Sunshine and the monarchy-in-crisis chronicle The Queen.

Front-runners all four acting categories nabbed nominations and seem poised to come home with Oscars on Feb. 25: Britain's Helen Mirren for best actress as British monarch Elizabeth II in The Queen; Forest Whitaker for best actor as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland; and Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls.

The best-actress category featured a 14th nomination for two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep, padding her record as the most-nominated actor ever, this time as a demonically demanding boss in The Devil Wears Prada.

Joining Mirren and Streep as nominees were Spain's Penelope Cruz as a woman dealing with bizarre domestic crises in Volver, and two other British actresses: Judi Dench as a scheming teacher in Notes on a Scandal and Kate Winslet as a woman in an affair with a neighbor in Little Children.

Full coverage in tomorrow's edition of the Taipei Times.