Canada continued its impressive Oscars run of recent years, with one Canadian actress and two foreign performers in Canuck films placing among the best actor and actress finalists, as the Academy Award nominees were unveiled in Beverly Hills on Tuesday morning.

As expected, the best actress heat could come to a showdown between Julie Christie for her performance as an Alzheimer’s-afflicted woman in Away from Her and 20-year-old Haligonian Ellen Page for her much-hyped turn as a pregnant teen in the U.S. indie sensation Juno. (The latter is also up for best picture and best director for Montreal-born Jason Reitman.)

The 66-year-old Christie recently won the Golden Globe for performance in a drama. It is her fourth Oscar nom; she previously won for the 1965 film Darling.

The toughest competition for best actress could come from Marion Cotillard for her role as legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf in the French film La Vie en Rose. Cotillard won the Golden Globe for performance in a musical or comedy. Also nom’d for the Oscar are Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Laura Linney for The Savages.

While Christie’s inclusion was expected, Away from Her also scored a surprise nom in the adapted screenplay category for its writer/director Sarah Polley, who based the script for her helming debut on the Alice Munro short story ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain.’ The film is produced by Toronto’s Daniel Iron, Simone Urdl and Jennifer Weiss and released through Mongrel Media and Lionsgate in the U.S.

‘We’re pretty delighted, especially for Sarah,’ Iron tells Playback Daily. ‘Julie’s won a lot of the lead-up awards, or was nominated, so it wasn’t out of left field. Sarah, however — it’s completely deserved, but her name wasn’t as well known. It was a shock, especially this year. There’s such a strong batch of adapted screenplays.’

Polley is ‘over the moon’ he adds. She will compete against heavy hitters Christopher Hampton (Atonement), Ronald Harwood (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men), and Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood).

Meanwhile, Viggo Mortensen got the nod for his portrayal of a mysterious Russian mobster in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises. The film, which recently crossed the $50 million mark at the worldwide box office, is coproduced by Toronto’s Robert Lantos and the UK’s Paul Webster.

It is the American-born Mortensen’s first nomination, and sees him up against George Clooney for Michael Clayton, Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood, Johnny Depp for Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Tommy Lee Jones for In the Valley of Elah.

Meanwhile, the National Film Board scored its 70th Oscar nom for Madame Tutli-Putli, up for best short animated film. The experimental stop-motion piece about a woman’s surreal voyage aboard a night train won two prizes earlier at Cannes. It is codirected by Montreal’s Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski and produced by the NFB’s Marcy Page, who has seen Oscar gold for previous productions Ryan (2004) and The Danish Poet (2007).

One of the shorts Madame Tutli-Putli will go up against is I Met the Walrus, directed by 27-year-old Toronto animator Josh Raskin, and supported by Bravo!FACT. The film is produced by Jerry Levitan, and the film is inspired by an interview Levitan did as a 14-year-old with John Lennon in 1969.

Not making the cut were Denys Arcand’s L’âge des ténèbres and Peter Raymont’s A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, which had been long-listed in the foreign-language and feature documentary categories, respectively.

Competing against Juno for best picture are Atonement, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.

Despite the ongoing WGA strike in Hollywood, the Academy Award presentation, in whatever form it ends up taking, is scheduled for February 24 at 8 p.m. ET, with CTV the Canadian broadcaster. A complete list of nominees is available at www.oscar.com.
With files from Marise Strauss