This year's Oscar picks have a foreign accent

Just as American entertainers are increasingly looking past the nation's borders -- with foreign adoptions, foreign charity ventures, foreign causes -- it makes sense that the Oscars would start to look outward, too.

The 79th Academy Award nominations, announced early yesterday, contained a glut of offerings with a global point of view. Among the best picture nominees, two -- the epic ensemble "Babel" and the Japanese-perspective "Letters From Iwo Jima" -- are essentially foreign-language films. Another, "The Queen," is a drama about British politics and culture. Only the Boston-set "The Departed" (itself a remake of a Hong Kong film) and the quirky family comedy "Little Miss Sunshine" seem entirely American in scope.

Several of this year's top acting nominations went to foreign-language performances. Spain's Penélope Cruz got her first best-actress nod for playing a distraught wife and mother in " Volver," and "Babel" stars Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi , relatively unknown to American audiences, were each nominated for best supporting actress. In the multi-strand screenplay set on three continents, Barraza performs largely in Spanish, Kikuchi in Japanese.

Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio put on an Afrikaans accent for his best-actor-nominated role in "Blood Diamond," and Djimon Hounsou won a supporting actor nomination for that film, set amid the gem trade in 1990s Sierra Leone. Helen Mirren got a best actress nod for her acclaimed performance as Queen Elizabeth II, and For est Whitaker won a best actor nomination for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland." Both are favorites to win going into the Oscars, which will be awarded on Feb. 25.

Among the hotly anticipated showdowns that night will be the one between Hollywood heavyweights Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood, who are squaring off for best director; their films "The Departed" and "Letters From Iwo Jima" are in the best picture race. Also up for best director are Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Babel"), Stephen Frears ("The Queen"), and Paul Greengrass ("United 93").

While Academy voters gave eight nominations to "Dreamgirls," a thinly veiled musical about the rise of a Supremes-like Motown trio, the heavily hyped picture was left off the lists for best picture and best director. It was the first time that the most-nominated film was shut out of the top award -- and a sign that academy voters seemed more inclined toward sober films that acknowledge a larger landscape.

"I think the world is becoming smaller . . . we have the Internet to thank, to a large extent," said Emerson College screenwriting professor Diane Lake , who wrote the screenplay for "Frida. " Still, Lake said, major studios have long been reluctant to produce films with a foreign scope.

"I think it's the filmmakers from other countries, and it's the independent people, who are dragging us into this world," she said, citing "international independents" such as González Iñárritu .

He was one of three Mexican directors with high-profile recognition yesterday. Alfonso Cuarón -- nominated in 2002 for his screenplay for "Y Tu Mamá También" -- won a best adapted screenplay nod for the English-language script of "Children of Men." And Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" was nominated for best foreign-language film and five other awards.

Hollywood has been taking a broader world view for years, said Toby Miller , a professor at the University of California Riverside and co-author of "Global Hollywood." The once-independent producer and distributor Miramax -- now a part of Disney -- helped make foreign-language films seem more commercially viable, he said.

"What Miramax managed to do, over the last decade, was to show that by using as much marketing as a major studio, you could get audiences, and also your colleagues in the academy, interested in what were not even designed to be wide-released films," he said.

In addition, Miller said, Oscar voters were struck by the critical success of "Life Is Beautiful," the Italian film that was a 1988 Oscar nominee. And he said studios couldn't ignore the commercial success of Mel Gibson's 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ," which was subtitled from Aramaic.

But most commercially successful foreign-language offerings have tended to be genre films, such as Asian action movies, said Brandon Gray , president and publisher of boxofficemojo.com , an online movie publication and box - office tracking service. Yesterday's best picture nominees are by no means blockbusters, whether presented in English or another language. "The Departed" is the only one of the five to earn more than $100 million at the box office.

Aside from the "Dreamgirls" upset, the list of nominees was short on big surprises. Industry-watchers had predicted most of the best picture contenders.

"Babel" -- which took home seven nominations in all -- last week won a Golden Globe Award for best drama. It's a film that re presents the worldly intentions of Oscar voters, Gray said. It also represents a time-honored divide between the academy and the ticket-buying public.

"It's ambiguous and multicultural and has pretensions," Gray said. "It's definitely the kind of picture that the academy and the critics tend to like. But audiences don't, and one can just look at the box office for this movie. It's done less than $24 million. And it stars Brad Pitt."

Still, the "Babel" nomination, and several others, sparked excitement within the Spanish-language filmmaking world.

"This is an unprecedented representation of Spanish - language filmmakers and actors, " del Toro said in a statement.

Among the "Dreamgirls" nominations were three for best song, a best supporting actor nod for Eddie Murphy , and a best supporting actress nomination for "American Idol" veteran Jennifer Hudson .

In all, the Academy nominated a record five black actors for its top awards. In the best actor category, along with Whitaker, Will Smith got a nod for his role as a homeless father in "The Pursuit of Happyness." The other nominees were DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling for "Half Nelson," and Peter O'Toole for "Venus."

Best actress nominees were Cruz; Mirren; Judi Dench for "Notes on a Scandal" ; Meryl Streep for "The Devil Wears Prada"; and Kate Winslet for "Little Children."

This year's announcements offered their share of landmarks. Streep got her 14th acting nomination. Winslet, 31, became the youngest person to receive five acting nominations. O'Toole and Scorsese, meanwhile, are notable for having never won competitive awards. O'Toole won an honorary Oscar in 2002; this is his eighth acting nomination.

"If you fail the first time," O'Toole said in a statement yesterday, "try, try, try, try, try, try, try again."

Wire service m aterial was used in this report. Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com.

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story about Academy Award nominations in yesterday's Living/Arts section misstated the release date of the movie "Life is Beautiful." The film came out in 1998.)