Hugo, Artist lead Oscars

Los Angeles, Jan. 24 (Reuters): Silent-era throwback film The Artist and Martin Scorsese's Hugo led the pack of Oscar nominees today, including nods in the best film category, in the race for the world's top movie honours.

Hugo, Scorsese's 3D film exploring the magic of moviemaking, earned the most nominations with 11 overall, including one for him in the director category. The Artist, which has swept through the awards season this year taking many pre-Oscar honours, had 10 nominations in total.

The two easily outdistanced other top nominees including baseball movie Moneyball, with six nods, and Steven Spielberg's World War I tale War Horse, also with six nominations.

Joining those four films in the race for best movie are family drama The Descendants, civil rights movie The Help, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, and 9/11 movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

Although it had 11 nominations, the nods for Hugo came largely from relatively minor categories such as art direction and costume design. The 10 nods for The Artist, by contrast, were in a wide-range of groups including best supporting actress for Berenice Bejo and director for Michel Hazanavicius.

Best actress nominees were led by Meryl Streep portraying former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, Glenn Close in a gender-bending role in Albert Nobbs, Viola Davis for The Help, Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn."

The best actor race sets up an intriguing match between friends George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Clooney was nominated for his role as a father trying to keep his family together in a time of crisis in The Descendants, and Pitt in his turn as a numbers-crunching baseball executive in Moneyball.

But the pair of Hollywood A-listers face stiff competition from Frenchman Jean Dujardin playing a fading silent picture star redeemed by love in The Artist, as well as Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Demian Bichir in A Better Life.

The Oscars are given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and this year's winners will be named at a ceremony in Hollywood on February 26.

The awards included a wide variety of films from The Artist to serious dramas like The Descendants and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to art films such as The Tree of Life.