More than 40 feature length films will compete for a handful of golden statuettes called Oscars during the 80th annual Academy Awards Sunday night.

Each year in February, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gives awards to the actors, directors, writers and other filmmakers who show exceptional quality in filmmaking.

"It's been a great film year," said Marissa Bernhard, a senior film student with a documentary emphasis. "There are so many good ones this year."

Two of the hottest contenders for best film, "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood," are both nominated for seven other awards. They're both adaptations from novels and they both have western film style themes.

Bernhard said it will be difficult for her to make her own selections for each category because all the films she saw this year were exceptional. However, she said the politics of the Academy Awards kept some of her favorite films from better nominations.

One of these films was "Into the Wild," a biographical film by Sean Penn about a boy who graduates from university, gives away all his possessions and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness.

"I felt they kind of snubbed his [Penn's] film a little bit," Bernhard said. She said the film has excellent music and cinematography, but it is only nominated for best supporting actor, Hal Holbrook, and best film editing.

A lot of the nominated films are R-rated, so many BYU students will not know about them, but there are still several films with lower ratings that are popular contenders for an Oscar.

"Ratatouille," a Pixar film about a rat who is a gourmet chef in Paris, is nominated for five awards including best animated feature and best original screenplay.

"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," an adaptation of the novel by Elle editor and stroke victim, Jean-Dominique Bauby, is nominated for four awards including best directing and best cinematography.

"On Saturday night, I plan on seeing 'Juno'," said Stephanie Johnson, a senior from California studying political science. "Everyone and their dog have seen it. It's supposed to be a good movie."

"Juno" is about a quick-witted high school student who gets pregnant and tries to find a suitable mother to adopt her child. It's nominated for four awards including best directing and best film.

Johnson said she likes to see the nominated films before the awards ceremonies so she can make her predictions more authoritatively.

"It gives me a better idea of why the academy chose them as nominees," Johnson said. She has seen two nominated films this week already and plans on seeing at least two more before Sunday night.

One of those was "Atonement," a film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel about a 13-year-old girl who falsely accuses her sister's lover of committing a crime of passion. It is nominated for seven awards including best adapted screenplay and best film.

The last of the five nominees for best film is "Michael Clayton." Starring George Clooney, it is about a lawyer who gets mixed up in a tough lawsuit while facing financial troubles of his own.

The film is nominated for six other awards including best original musical score and best actor, though Clooney has already conceded his nomination to the lead actor of "There Will Be Blood."

"If you want my honest opinion, it's going to be Daniel Day-Lewis," Clooney told the World Entertainment News Network earlier this month. "He sort of irritates us all because he's so good."

"Michael Clayton" is one of the few films nominated that is both available on DVD and still showing in some dollar cinemas in Utah.

A full list of nominated films and award categories is available at the Academy Awards Web site, www.oscar.com.

Copyright Brigham Young University 21 Feb 2008