BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Hollywood awards are so up for grabs that even Golden Globe voters were divided, picking seven nominees for best drama instead of the usual five.
The classy British drama “Atonement” received a leading seven nominations Thursday and joined such savage critical favorites as “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood” as potential Academy Awards heavyweights.
All three earned nominations for best drama, though this year’s awards pageant is so wide open that voters could not narrow things down to the usual five nominees. Because of a tie in voting, there were seven, the others being the crime sagas “American Gangster” and “Eastern Promises,” the feel-good campus story “The Great Debaters” and the corporate-lawsuit drama “Michael Clayton.”
Just released last weekend, “Atonement” earned nominations for lead players Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, 13-year-old supporting actress Saoirse Ronan and director Joe Wright, along with screenwriting and musical score.
Oscar nominations come out Jan. 22, nine days after the Globes are presented on Jan. 13. Further confounding the crowded Oscar campaign is a strong lineup in the Golden Globes’ second best-picture category, for musical or comedy.
The Johnny Depp stage adaptation “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” could become the latest entry in a rebirth of the Hollywood movie musical to earn a best-picture Oscar nomination.
Along with best musical or comedy, “Sweeney Todd” earned acting nominations for Depp as the murderous title character and Helena Bonham Carter as his landlady, who serves the barber’s victims up in her meat pies. Tim Burton, Bonham Carter’s romantic partner, was nominated for directing “Sweeney Todd.”
Along with “Sweeney Todd,” two other musicals — the Beatles romance “Across the Universe” and the Broadway adaptation “Hairspray” — were nominated in the musical or comedy category, along with the foreign-policy romp “Charlie Wilson’s War” and the teen-pregnancy tale “Juno.”
Past Oscar winners crowded the Globe nominations. Philip Seymour Hoffman was a double Globe nominee for “Charlie Wilson’s War” and “The Savages.”
Cate Blanchett also had two nominations, as dramatic actress for playing the British monarch in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” and supporting actress for her gender-bending role as an incarnation of Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There.”
