Silently ‘The Artist’ and ‘Hugo’ lead Oscars

It's been almost as many years as there've been Academy Awards since a silent film was nominated for best picture. And here comes The Artist, making a lot of noise.

A just-about-entirely silent film (in black and white, no less), the homage to old Hollywood received 10 nominations, including best picture, best actor, and best director, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its nominees for the 84th Academy Awards this morning in Beverly Hills.

In all, nine films are vying for the best picture prize. The Artist's competition: The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life and War Horse.

Hugo, Martin Scorsese's effects-driven 3-D tribute to - yes - the silent era, led the pack with 11 nominations, including one for Scorsese's direction, but it failed to score recognition for its cast. (With a procedural change to the nominating rules instituted in June, it's possible to have anywhere from five to 10 best picture nominees, determined by a percentage of the 6,000-plus members' first place votes.)

The Help, the Southern-fried story of black domestics and their white employers at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement, received three acting nods: Viola Davis, for best actress, and Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer for actress in a supporting role.

Joining Davis in the highly competitive lead actress category: Meryl Streep, for her decades-spanning portrait of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (it's her 17th Oscar nomination, and she hasn't won since 1983); Michelle Williams, who channeled mid-century sex bomb Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn; Glenn Close, for the title role - a woman masquerading as a man - in Albert Nobbs, and newcomer Rooney Mara, for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Mara's nomination was perhaps the most surprising, bumping Charlize Theron (for Young Adult) and Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia) out of the running.