The nominations for the 2013 Academy Awards were announced earlier this morning, and with it came a surprising number of both snubs and surprises, as the Oscar race has completely changed.

Starting off with Best Picture, there weren’t a whole lot of surprises among the nine nominees, and when looking at our predictions, both Beasts of the Southern Wild and Amour got in in favor of Moonrise Kingdom, although both of those films were definite possibilities going in.

In Best Director we not only get to some of the biggest snubs and surprises of the year, but perhaps in recent memory, as neither Ben Affleck nor Kathryn Bigelow were nominated for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. These were two films that were seemingly in a three-horse race with Lincoln, although any Best Picture hopes for those films have certainly been dashed. David O. Russell and Michael Haneke did get nominations for Silver Linings Playbook, as did Beasts of the Southern Wild director Benh Zeitlin, which is a shocker to be sure. This Best Director category is not only a head-scratcher, but something of a travesty, as the inclusion of Russell may be the only silver lining. Thanks to Gregory Ellwood at HitFix for pointing out, the last time a film won Best Picture without a Best Director nom was Driving Miss Daisy in 1990.

In Best Actor, there weren’t many surprises, as Joaquin Phoenix got in the fifth slot for the The Master in favor of John Hawkes for The Sessions. Best Actress had both Quvenzahane Wallis and Emmanuelle Riva for Beasts of the Southern Wild and Amour, while Marion Cotillard was shut out for Rust and Bone. In Supporting Actor, Christoph Waltz was rewarded in favor of Leonardo Dicaprio for Django Unchained, as Javier Bardem missed the cut for his villainous turn in Skyfall, while Jacki Weaver got into Supporting Actress as the Academy clearly fell head over heels for Silver Linings Playbook.

For Original Screenplay, Paul Thomas Anderson was snubbed for The Master, as both John Gatins for Flight and Michael Haneke for Amour got in. Predictably, the Academy couldn’t reward a sci-fi movie, so Rian Johnson’s brilliant script for Looper didn’t make the cut. In Adapted Screenplay, the Academy’s love for Beasts of the Southern Wild continued, as Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin were rewarded, and Stephen Chbosky’s brilliant screenplay for The Perks of Being a Wallflower fell by the wayside.

Finally, the lack of The Intouchables in Foreign Language is kind of stunning, as we had it as the favorite, and some thought it could get a Best Picture nomination. We’re talking about the film that earned star Omar Sy a Best Actor win over The Artist’s Jean Dujardin at the 2012 César Awards. It looks like Amour now has this category locked up.

The full list of nominees can be seen here. For reference to the article, take a look at our predictions here and here.