Golden Globe winner Slumdog Millionaire racked up 10 nods including Best Picture, Best Director (Danny Boyle), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Simon Beaufoy).
Slumdog composer A.R. Rahman snagged two of the three nominations for Best Original Song for "O Saya" — a shared nomination with M.I.A — and "Jai Ho" which was featured in the crowd-pleasing dance number during the film's closing credits:
As always, Asian/American filmmakers are top contenders in the documentary categories. Steven Okazaki earns his fourth Oscar nomination for The Conscience of Nhem En which explores the life of a teen photographer assigned to the Tuol Sleng Prison in 1970s Cambodia, while Thavisouk Phrasavath and Ellen Kuras' The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) is up for Best Documentary Feature:
Best Foreign Film nominees include Yojiro Takita's Departures from Japan and France's Entre les murs or The Class, Laurent Cantet's peek inside a tough Parisian junior high school comprised of children of Asian, African, and Arab immigrants.
And let us not forget, the crowning achievement in Asian American cinema this past year: Kung Fu Panda, nominated for Best Animated Feature.
Kidding.
The Academy Awards air live on Sunday, February 22nd on ABC.
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