Rings Hot, Mountain Cold in Oscar Nominations

The Return of the King, the final part of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, leads the pack with 11 nominations for this year's Academy awards.

Peter Weir's Master and Commander is a surprise rival in second place with 10 nominations, while the major shock was provided by the Academy's ringing snub of the hotly tipped Cold Mountain. Anthony Minghella's US civil war romance crucially missed out on the shortlist for both best picture and best director.

Pitted against Return of the King in the battle for best picture are Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, Master and Commander, Mystic River and Seabiscuit. In the best director category, Peter Jackson will start as favourite against Peter Weir, Sofia Coppola, Clint Eastwood (for Mystic River) and Fernando Meirelles, the maker of the acclaimed Brazilian gang movie City of God.

The acting categories threw up further surprises, with nominations for young Keisha Castle-Hughes (best actress for the Maori fable Whale Rider), Iranian stalwart Shoshreh Aghdashloo (best supporting actress for The House of Sand and Fog) and Djimon Hounsou (best supporting actor for In America).

Elsewhere, The Last Samurai's Ken Watanabe scooped a supporting actor nomination, while co-star Tom Cruise went begging.

The acting categories also spelled good news for British talent. Ben Kingsley and Jude Law won best actor nominations for their work in The House of Sand and Fog and Cold Mountain respectively. In the actress category, Samantha Morton won her second Oscar nomination for her turn in Jim Sheridan's In America.