And the nominees are….

The 2012 Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and, as with every awards season, there were safe bets, snubs, and surprises.

Terrence Malick's expansive and divisive drama The Tree of Life made an unexpectedly strong showing, garnering nods for both Best Picture and Best Director. (This brings up the question: Will the notoriously reclusive filmmaker show up at the ceremony?)

Speaking of Best Picture, most of the likely nominees were accounted for--including two of our favorites, The Artist and Moneyball--but Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? Really? One of the finest movies of the year? We beg to differ.

Gary Oldman received a much-deserved Best Actor nomination for his relatively understated role in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, making it, somewhat bafflingly, the first Academy Awards nod of his long and dynamic career.

Meanwhile, in the realm of acting snubs, there were many CM faves missing, including Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, Tilda Swinton, and Ryan Gosling.

In one of the most surprising cuts, Steven Spielberg's entertaining and accomplished movie The Adventures of Tintin got shut out of the Best Animated Feature category. (But at least Pixar's tepid Cars 2 also was ignored.)

Drive joined The Skin I Live In as films that were just too refreshingly weird to get nominated, but, impressively, A Separation received both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay nods.

And, sorry Hogwarts supporters, despite a spectacular closing cinematic chapter, the Academy just wasn't keen on conjuring up any major awards nominations for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, denying it a possible Return of the King-like victory lap.

Check out the full list of nominees here.