This truly has been GUBU year at the Oscar nominations. Certainly, the unexpected was expected given that there was no clear front runner like Schindler's List in 1994 or Forrest Gump last year. But nobody could have predicted all the many surprises that emerged when the nominations for the 68th annual Academy Awards were announced by Academy president Arthur Hiller and Oscar winning actress Holly Hunter in Los Angeles yesterday.

An Australian movie about a talking pig, Babe, scored seven nominations including best picture. A low budget Italian film, Il Postino, was nominated in five categories, including best picture, while such high profile US movies as Heat and Get Shorty received no nominations whatsoever and Seven, Casino, The American President and The Bridges of Madison County received just one nomination each.

The star of Il Postino, an Italian actor who died two years ago, was nominated for best actor while hotly tipped actors such as John Travolta, Morgan Freeman, Jonathan Pryce and Robert Dc Niro were shut out. Only one wholly American film made the short list for best picture and only one American was nominated for best director. And obscure films from Algeria and Brazil were nominated for beat foreign language film while hot new movies were Spain and France were ignored GUBU indeed.

Mel Gibson's Braveheart made substantially on location in Ireland, led the field with 10 nominations, followed by Apollo 13 with nine and Babe and Sense and Sensibility with seven each. There are five nominations for each Oscar and this is how the nominees shape up in the key categories

BEST PICTURE

THE only American film on the list, Ron Howard's Apollo 13 is one of the least surprising nominations, but Howard himself failed to secure a best director nomination. Although American financed, Braveheart was made by an Australian, Mel Gibson, in Ireland and Scotland with predominantly British and Irish actors joining Gibson himself in the cast. Given that it's only his second movie as a director (after Man Without A Face), the Oscars sweep achieved by Braveheart is a triumph for Gibson.

Chris Noonan, an Australian television director making his cinema debut, enjoyed another triumph with the well deserved success of Babe, his delightful fable about a talking pig the film could be the dark horse, so to speak, on Oscars night next month.

While the two heavily touted Shakespearean adaptations, Richard III and Othello were virtually ignored, the Taiwanese director, Ang Lec, fared far better with Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, adapted by and starring Emma Thompson.

The Steve Forbes factor played a part only the filth foreign language film to be nominated far best picture, following Le Grand Illusion, Z, The Emigrants and Cries and Whispers. The film's US distributor Miramax, conducted an earnest and expensive campaign in the film trade papers, including colour advertisements on the cover of Variety, to promote its prospects. Its five Oscar nominations will give Il Postino a huge boost at the international box office. The film left me cold and I named it the most over rated movie of last year.

BEST DIRECTOR

THREE of the best picture nominees also feature here the Australians, Chris Noonan and Mel Gibson for Babe and Braveheart, respectively,

Michael Radford, the English director of Il Postino. Another English director, Mike Figgis, gets a nomination for the low budget Leaving Las Vegas, and the only American among the nominees is the actor, Tim Robbins, for Dead Man Walking, the story of a convict (Sean Penn) on death row who is befriended by a nun played by Robbins's off screen partner, Susan Sarandon. None of the five nominees has been nominated for best director in the past, while high profile directors such as Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood did not make the short list.

BEST ACTOR

THE startling news here is the inclusion of the Italian actor Massimo Troisi for Il Postino Troisi died from heart disease at the age of 41 on the day after the film finished shooting two years ago. It is 20 years since an actor was last nominated posthumously, when Peter Finch won for NetWork, other posthumous nominees have included James Dean (twice) and Spencer Tracy.

Playing a suicidal alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas. Nicolas Cage gets a nomination as does Sean Penn for Dead Man Walking. The short list is completed by two former winners of the award Richard Dreyfuss, who won the 1977 Oscar for The Goodbye Girl, makes a comeback in Mr Holland's Opus, and Anthony Hopkins, who took the 1991 Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs, is nominated for playing the title role in the controversial Nixon.

BEST ACTRESS

IN an unusually strong year for women's roles, the competition was particularly tough here. Taken seriously at last, Sharon Stone gets her first nomination as an insecure, drug taking Las Vegas prostitute in Casino while Elisabeth Shue gets on the list for her first demanding role, as another Las Vegas prostitute in Leaving Las Vegas. Regular nominee Susan Sarandon is up again, this time as the nun in Dead Man Walking. And two former winners complete the list two time winner Meryl Streep for The Bridges of Madison County and Emma Thompson for Sense and Sensibility. Thompson received a second nomination this year, for her screenplay for the same film.

The most surprising omission has to be Nicole Kidman (To Die For). Other serious contenders included Kathy Bates (Dolores Claibourne), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Georgia) and Annette Bening (The American President)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

OF the 10 nominations available to actresses, three this year have gone to women playing prostitutes the third is Mira Sorvino, already the hot favourite to win, for Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite. Joan Allen is nominated for playing the president's wife in Nixon. Completing the category are Kate Winslet (Sense and Sensibility), Kathleen Quinlan (Apollo 13) and Mare Winningham (Georgia). Surprising omissions are Anjelica Huston (The Crossing Guard) and Kyra Sedgwick (Something to Talk About).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

KYRA Sedgwick's husband, Kevin Bacon (Murder in the First) is an unexpected exclusion here, as are Delroy Lindo (Clockers), Jon Voight (Heat) and Alan Rickman (Sense and Sensibility). The five who made the short list are Brad Pitt (12 Monkeys), Kevin Spacey (The Usual Suspects), James Cromwell (Babe), Ed Harris (Apollo 13) and, surprisingly, Tim Roth (Rob Roy).

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

THIS is regularly one of the oddest Oscar categories and this year is no exception with the high profile entries from Spain (The Flower of My Secret), Germany (The Promise) and France (Gazon Maudit) excluded in favour of Giuseppe Tornatore's Star Maker (Italy), the Dutch Antonia's Line (which won the audience award at the Toronto festival), and little known movies from Sweden (All Things Fair), Algeria (Dust of Life) and Brazil (O Quatrilho).

SCREENPLAYS

THE live nominees for best original screenplay are Christopher McQuairie (The Usual Suspects), Woody Allen (Mighty Aphrodite). Randall Wallace

(Braveheart), Steven J Rivele, Christopher Wilkinson and Oliver Stone (Nixon) and Joss Whedon, Joel Cohen, Andrew Stanton and Alec Solokow for Disney's animated Toy Story. Michael Radford and the late Massimo Troisi are nominated with three collaborators for Il Postino in the adapted screenplay category, along with William Broyles Jr and Al Reinert (Apollo 13), Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility) and George Miller and Chris Noonan (Babe).

IN OTHER CATEGORIES

BRUCE Springsteen (a former winner), Bryan Adams and Randy Newman are all in for best original film song for their contributions to Dead Man Walking, Don Juan DeMarco and Toy Story, respectively. James Horner gets two of the five nominations for best original dramatic score, for Apollo 13 and Braveheart the other nominees are Patrick Doyle (Sense and Sensibility), Luis Bacalov (Il Postino) and John Williams (Nixon). Up for best musical or comedy score are The American President, Pocahontas, Sabrina, Toy Story and Unstrung Heroes.

As usual, the documentary features category proves controversial, with Crumb deemed ineligible and The Celluloid Closet and Unzipped shut out. And British animator Nick Park is back in contention for another animated short film Oscar for A Close Shave.