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Eastman Kodak Co. wants to end its contract for naming rights to the glamorous Los Angeles theater that hosts the Academy Awards as it tries to improve its financial position enough to move out of bankruptcy.

The photography pioneer’s financial advisers say in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court filing this week that the benefits of having the upstate New York company’s name on the 3,300-seat Kodak Theatre aren’t worth the cost.

Details of the contract with CIM Group of Los Angeles weren’t disclosed. But the company says it pays a significant amount annually for the naming rights at the venue. It opened in 2001.

Rochester-based Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Jan. 19. The 132-year-old company is required to produce a reorganization plan by early 2013.

By MESFIN FEKADU

The race for the best original song Oscar is a slim one with two songs up for the honor, a first for the Academy Awards.

Sergio Mendes’ “Real In Rio” from the animated adventure “Rio” will compete with Bret McKenzie’s “Man or Muppet” from “The Muppets,” despite having a bevy of all-star musicians like Elton John, Mary J. Blige, will.i.am and Pink in contention for nomination.

Charles Bernstein, the former chairman of the Academy Awards’ music branch, says he “personally was surprised” that only two songs are up for the honor.

In the past, the number of nominees for best original song has ranged from three to 14. Only up to five songs are eligible for nomination.

“I personally felt that there may have been more than two that I personally would have championed,” he said in an interview after the Oscars nominations were announced Tuesday. “But it is a majority vote situation.”

This year, 39 songs were eligible for nomination for best original song, including tracks from Brad Paisley, Robbie Williams, The National, Zooey Deschanel, Zac Brown, Chris Cornell and others.

Members of the music branch can rank songs using 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5 or 6, and a song must have at least an average score of 8.25 to be nominated. If only one song gets that score, it and the song receiving the next highest score will be the two nominees.

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AP Entertainment Editor Alicia Quarles discusses who she thinks will win Academy Awards:

Welcome to the Oscar nominations! Let’s see which nominees the reporters on hand shamelessly cheer for, even though they’re probably not supposed to! I always feel bad for the ones that the crowd isn’t so psyched about, here and during the In Memoriam segment. It’s like  ”Sorry you died! Just not as sorry as we are about him!”

For the sake of time, I’ll just be running down the acting nominations and Best Film, because…deadlines and such. Here we go! Tom Shirk, Academy president, welcomes us, and introduces Jennifer Lawrence, soon to be the next huge thing after “The Hunger Games” comes out. Good for her.

‘Hugo’ leads Academy Awards with 11 nominations | Oscars.com: Full list of nominees

Supporting actress: Berenice Bejo, “The Artist,” Jessica Chastain, “The Help,” Melisa McCarthy, “Bridesmaids,” Janet McTeer, “Albert Nobbs,” Octavia Spencer, “The Help.”

Unless the Oscar voters are going to massively zig where everyone else has zagged, this is probably Octavia Spencer’s night, unless they can’t resist the chance to give some love to a true genuis comic performance like the one Melissa McCarthy gave. It involved puppies in berets, bad Brazilian food and extreme fighting. What’s not to love?
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Among the top nominees: 'The Descendants', featuring George Clooney; 'Moneyball', starring Brad Pitt; and 'Hugo', with Asa Butterfield.

By DAVID GERMAIN

Martin Scorsese’s Paris adventure “Hugo” leads the Academy Awards with 11 nominations, among them best picture and the latest director slot for the Oscar-winning filmmaker.

Also nominated for best picture Tuesday: the silent film “The Artist”; the family drama “The Descendants”; the Sept. 11 tale “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”; the Deep South drama “The Help”; the romantic fantasy “Midnight in Paris”; the sports tale “Moneyball”; the family chronicle “The Tree of Life”; and the World War I epic “War Horse.”

Leslie Streeter: Oscar Nominations 2012 — What do you think? | Oscars.com: Full list of nominees

The nominations set up a best-picture showdown between the top films at the Golden Globes: best musical or comedy recipient “The Artist” and best drama winner “The Descendants.”

“The Artist” ran second with 10 nominations, among them writing and directing nominations for French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, a best-actor honor for Jean Dujardin and a supporting-actress slot for Berenice Bejo.

Because of a rule change requiring films to receive a certain number of first-place votes, the best-picture field has only nine nominees rather than the 10 that were in the running the last two years.

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Three of Eyman's 'maybe' nominees: Melissa McCarthy of 'Bridesmaids', Jean Dujardin of 'The Artist', Glenn Close of 'Albert Nobbs'.

Oscars nominations are like dating: sometimes it’s serious; sometimes it’s not. Some nominees actually have a chance to win, and some don’t.

Movie studios are not primarily in the business of manufacturing quality motion pictures – in any given year, any major studio will rarely disgorge more than a couple of pictures that are supposed to be good; the rest are just supposed to be commercial.

In addition, almost nothing that gets released until the last couple of months of the year has any claim on quality. This particular brilliant strategy is why nearly everybody over the age of 40 has gotten out of the habit of going to the movies regularly – whole seasons go by without anything made for them.

That said, picking winners is a lot easier than picking the nominations, because it’s always possible that a really good performance in a film almost nobody saw and/or liked will get nominated, even if it has little chance of winning.

Last year’s gambit of nominating 10 movies for Best Picture rather than the traditional five was an amusingly craven effort to appeal to the widest possible audience, but it strained credibility.

This year, the Best Picture category might have five nominees, or it might have any number up to and including 10, depending on the number of votes cast for each title. (Keep in mind that these are the same people who thought that smug twerp James Franco was a suitable Oscar host.)

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Nine films have made the cut for consideration in the foreign-language category at the Academy Awards.

Among them is Iran’s “A Separation” from writer-director Asghar Farhadi, which won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film last weekend and has been racking up kudos from critics groups nationwide.

Also on the list is German director Wim Wenders’ “Pina,” a 3-D tribute to the career of groundbreaking choreographer Pina Bausch which is also on the shortlist for best documentary feature.

The other contenders are: Belgium’s “Bullhead,” Canada’s “Monsieur Lazhar,” Denmark’s “Superclásico,” Israel’s “Footnote,” Morocco’s, “Omar Killed Me,” Poland’s “In Darkness” and Taiwan’s “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale.”

Oscar nominations will be announced Tuesday, with the ceremony set for Feb. 26.

The Academy Awards is the best awards show on TV — at least according to Billy Crystal.

The veteran Oscar host calls it “the granddaddy of all the shows” and says in a new video that he appreciates being “trusted with this show again.”

Crystal says he and Oscar producers are approaching the show “as fans of the movies and movie theaters and our first experiences in them.”

Wearing a tuxedo and dancing among oversized Oscar statues, the 63-year-old comedian acknowledges that “there’s so much expected” of his return and hints that he’ll take his traditional approach to opening the show by inserting himself into the year’s films.

The video is among special content the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is offering through its official show website, Oscar.com.

Hollywood filmmaker and visual-effects master Douglas Trumbull is receiving an honorary Academy Award.

The Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday that it present its Gordon E. Sawyer Award to Trumbull, whose pioneering visual-effects credits include “2001: A Space Odyssey,” ”Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” ”Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and “Blade Runner.”

Trumbull also worked on last year’s Brad Pitt-Terrence Malick drama “The Tree of Life,” which featured grand images of the cosmos and the age of dinosaurs.

The honorary Oscar will be presented to Trumbull at the academy’s scientific and technical awards ceremony Feb. 11.

Trumbull is the 23rd recipient of the Sawyer Award, which honors technical contributions to Hollywood.