The dream of the top Academy Award is gone for the musical Dreamgirls. It got eight Oscar nominations, but not best picture — leaving the main prize up for grabs.Will it be the sprawling global drama Babel, which placed second with seven nominations, or the mob epic>The Departed<$>? Could the palace tale The Quee$>be crowned best picture, or even Little Miss Sunshine, a road-trip romp that became last year’s independent-cinema darling?

“Nobody knows anything about these award ceremonies,” said Leonardo DiCaprio, a best-actor nominee for the African adventure Blood Diamond. “And that’s the fun everybody has watching the Academy Awards. That’s what’s exciting.”

DiCaprio was responding to his own prospects of winning, but his sentiments are especially true this year for the biggest trophy.

On a nominations day filled with surprises, the most unexpected Tuesday was the downfall Dreamgirls<$>, considered a front-runner but which missed out on the fifth best-picture slot to the Second World War saga Letters From Iwo Jima.

It was the first time ever that the film with the most nominations failed to earn a best-picture s.

Dreamgirls<$> did grab nominations for Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson, the favourites to win the supporting-acting prizes. Lead-performer front-runners Helen Mirren of The Qn <$>and Forest Whitaker of The Last King of Scond <$>also were nominated, potentially leaving little drama in the outcome of the four acting categories.

Best-picture is anyone’s guess, though. Previous Hollywood honours usually narrow the field to a front-runner or two, but this season, top prize winners have been all over the place.

Babel won best draand Dreamgirls<$> took best musical or comedy at the Golden Globes, yet even then, awards watchers felt The DepartedI>or The Queen <$>could walk off with best picture come Oscar night on February 25.

Last weekend’s Producers Guild of America Awards muddied things up more as the low-budgeted Little Miss Sunshine was named best film over its big-studiivals.

Little Miss Sunshine<$> producer David Friendly said he never expected his film to win over such guild nominees as The Departe/I>and Dreamgirls<$>, especially when he saw who was presenting the award.

“When Tom Cruise came walking out to give the picture-of-the-year award, I thought, ‘Well that’s it, we didn’t win,”’ Friendly said. “In my life, Tom Cruise doesn’t give me awards.”

Friendly had another surprise on Tuesday when eamgirls<$> failed to score a best-picture Oscar nomination.

“I was floored. That one I thought was a given. I actually feel badly because I thought it was a very nice film,” Friendly said. “This is the bitter side of this whole thing.”

Though Murphy and Hudson nabbed acting nominations for <reamgirls<$>, its director Bill Condon and lead players Jamie Foxx and Beyonce Knowles were snubbed.

Hudson, who shot to fame two years ago as an Aican Idol <$>finalist, and Murphy stole the show in>Dreamgirls<$> as soulful singers in Detroit’s 1960s and ‘70s Motown scene.

Oscar attention is a new experience for Murphy, whose fast-talking persona has brought him devoted audiences but little awards acclaim in his 25-year career.

“I am deeply honoured and humbled that the academy has chosen to recognise my performance iI>Dreamgirls<$>,” Murphy said in a statement. “Without a doubt receiving this nomination will stand out as one of the highlights of my career.”

Along with Mirren, who plays Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, best-actress nominees were Penelope Cruz as a woman dealing with bizarre domic crises in Volver<$>; Judi Dench as a scheming teacher in Ns on a Scandal<$>; Meryl Streep as a tyrannical boss in The Devil Wears Prada; and Kate Winslet as a housewife in an affair wia neighbour in Little Children.

Whitaker was nominated for best actor as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, while DiCaprio was chosen for playing a mercenary on a questr a rare gem in Blood Diamond. Also nominated were Ryan Gosling as a teacher with a drug addiction in Half Nelson; Peter O’Toole as a lecous old actor in Venus; and Will Smith as a homeless dad in Thersuit of Happyness<$>.

It was the eighth nomination for O’Toole, and another loss would put him in the record books as the actor with the most nominations without a win.

“If you fail the first time, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again,” O’Toole said in a statement.

This finally may be the year for The Departed filmmaker Martin Scorsese, tied with four other directors for the Oscar-futility record of five nominans and five losses.

The Departed marks Scorsese’s return to the cops-and-mobsters genre he mastered in decades past and is considered his best shot to finally win an Oscar, though a sixth defeat would put him alone in the record book as the most nominated director not to win an Oscar ever.

“He’s been overlooked too long,” said DiCaprio, the star of Scorsese’s last three movies. “He’s deserved it many times before. I couldn’t be more happy for this film and for Marty. I’ve been blessed to have worked with him. But I’m done trying to predict what I think he deserves. Ultimately, it’s beyond anybody’s control, I guess.”

Clint Eastwood, who won the best-director prize two years ago for Million Dollar Baby <$>over Scorsese for The Aviator, scored another dcting nomination for Letters From Iwo Jima, something of a surprise considering the Directors Guild of America overlooked him.

The Japanese-language Letters wound up overshadowing his higherofile companion film Flags of Our Fathers in awards season.

“It was kind of strange, the whole thing. It was sort of the second-cousin film,” Eastwood said. “Letters was the smaller brother, but by the same token, it was a really good script.”

Among other surprises and intriguing turns: Ten-year-old Abigail Breslin became the fourth-youngest actress ever nominated, earn a supporting slot for Little Miss Sunshine<$>; Mark Wahlberg scored a supporting-actor nomination over top-billed co-stars DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nilson for The Departed<$>; past winner and Oscar darling Pedromodovar’s Volver<$>, which had been considered a possible front-runner for the foreign-language prize, was not nominated; and two new faces to US audiences, Babel co-stars Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi both were nominated for supporting actress.

When Barraza learned of her nomination, “I screamed and I jumped and I cried and kissed my husband many times,” she said.

A longshot came in with the best-actnomination for Gosling in Half Nelson, a little-seen independent drama. Gosling was on the phone with his manager when he learned of his nomination, then he immediately heard tires squeal and a car crash outside his window, where a motorcycle policeman had been hit by a van.

“I was fielding all these congratulatory phone calls and watching this guy put into an ambulance, so it was a real conflict of emotion,” Gosling said. “Then I saw on the news that he had just broken his arm. I felt like it turned out to be a pretty good day for both of us.”