Loud and clear, Oscar salutes the silents

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

The nearly entirely silent black-and-white homage to old Hollywood nabbed 10 nominations, including best picture, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its nominees for the 84th Academy Awards Tuesday morning in Beverly Hills.

Hugo, another tribute to the Silent Era, eked out the most nominations, with 11.

In all, nine films are vying for the top prize. With The Artist and Hugo are: The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, and War Horse. Hugo, Martin Scorsese's effects-driven 3-D adventure, also landed a director nomination, but failed to gain recognition for its cast. (A procedural change to the nominating rules allows five to 10 best-picture nominees, determined by a percentage of first-place votes cast by the 6,000-plus Academy members.)

The Help, the Southern-fried story of black domestics and their white employers during 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 category: Meryl Streep, for her decades-spanning portrait of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (it's Streep's 17th Oscar nomination); 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, helping to elbow out Charlize Theron (Young Adult) and Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia).