'Oppenheimer' leads Oscar nominations

After a tumultuous movie year marred by strikes and work stoppages, the Academy Awards showered nominations yesterday on Christopher Nolan's blockbuster biopic, "Oppenheimer," which came away with a leading 13 nominations.

Nolan's three-hour opus, viewed as the best picture frontrunner, received nods for best picture; Nolan's direction; acting nominations for Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt; and multiple honors for the craft of Nolan's J. Robert Oppenheimer drama.

Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" wasn't far behind with eight nominations, including nods for best picture; Ryan Gosling for best supporting actor; and two best-song candidates in "What Was I Made For" and "I'm Just Ken." But Gerwig was surprisingly left out of the best director field.

Both Martin Scorsese's Osage epic "Killers of the Flower Moon" and Yorgos Lanthimos' Frankenstein riff "Poor Things" were also widely celebrated. "Poor Things" landed 11 nods, while "Killers of the Moon" was nominated for 10 Oscars.

Lily Gladstone, star of "Killers of the Flower Moon," became the first Native American nominated for best actress. For the 10th time, Scorsese was nominated for best director. Leonardo DiCaprio, though, was left out of best actor.

Those four contenders made for a maximalist quartet of Oscar heavyweights: Nolan's sprawling biopic, Gerwig's near-musical, Scorsese's pitch-black Western and Lanthimos' sumptuously designed fantasy. Each utilized a wide spectrum of cinematic tools to tell big, often disturbing big-screen stories. And each - even Apple's biggest-budgeted movie yet, "Killers of the Flower Moon" - had robust theatrical releases that saved streaming for months later.

The 10 films nominated for best picture were: "Oppenheimer," "Barbie," ...