And the Oscar goes to...:

It's Oscar Awards time once again!

Nalaka GUNAWARDENE and Vindana ARIYAWANSA

The 84th Academy Awards ceremony, conducted by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), will honour the best films of 2011 by presenting Academy Awards which are better known as 'Oscars.'

The ceremony is due to take place on February 26 this year at the Kodak theatre in Hollywood, California.

The Oscar award nominations were announced by the Academy on January 24. Leading the nominations are the movies Hugo (11 nominations), The Artist (10) and Moneyball and War Horse (six nominations each). A total of nine films have been nominated in the coveted Best Picture category.

Today, we salute some of the nominated films and film makers. You will soon know the winners!

1. Actor George Clooney is nominated for an Oscar for his role in The Descendants which was directed by Alexander Payne who is known for creating award winning independent movies. Out of five feature films directed by Payne, six actors have been nominated for acting Oscars and Payne himself has had three nominations for best screenplay Oscar. For which movie did he win the best screenplay Oscar in 2005 along with Jim Taylor?

2. Hugo was a rare family movie made in 2011 by director Martin Scorsese, which has multiple Oscar nominations for 2011, including for the best picture. This movie is set in Paris in the 1930s, and is about an orphan who lives in the walls of a train station who is wrapped up in a mystery involving his late father and an automaton. This movie is homage to early film making pioneers, early special effects wizards and a tribute to the conservation of films. In this movie, Sir Ben Kingsley plays a French illusionist and a film maker. What is the character's name?

3. Written and directed by Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris has been nominated for this year's best picture Oscar. Although he claims not to be interested in awards, Woody Allen has won three Oscars and been nominated a total of 23 times: 15 as a screenwriter, 7 as a director and one as an actor.

He has had more screenwriting Oscar nominations than any other writer; all are in the 'Best Original Screenplay' category. For which movie did Woody Allen win his solitary best director Oscar in 1978 - beating the immensely popular box office smash Star Wars?

4. One film nominated for the best picture Oscar for 2011 is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It is the fourth film directed by Steven Daldry, known for his previous two movies The Hours and The Reader which won their lead actresses Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet the best actress Oscars. He also achieved a rare feat of being nominated for the best director Oscar for his first three movies. Name his first movie, which was about a talented young boy who becomes torn between his unexpected love of dance and the disintegration of his family.

5. The Best Picture Oscar nominated movie War Horse is the first Steven Spielberg film to be edited digitally. He famously held on to editing more traditionally: his editor, Michael Kahn, has edited nearly all of Spielberg's films on a Moviola. Fourteen horses played 'Joey' the starring horse during this latest movie. The 'main' acting horse in the film, Finder, also portrayed another horse in the movie about a famous racehorse in 2003. That movie was nominated for seven Oscars in 2004. Name that earlier movie.

6. Moneyball, a movie directed by Bennett Miller, is nominated for six Oscars including the best picture, best actor and best supporting actor respectively for Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. The movie is based on Oakland Athletics (a professional major league baseball team in California, USA) general manager's successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players for 2002 baseball season. His character is portrayed by Brad Pitt. Name this legendary general manager.

7. A South Asian rationalist, who lectured and wrote widely to urge people to go by reason and scientific verification and not by supernatural claims or superstition peddled by various individuals or sects, used to say often: "He who does not allow his miracles to be investigated is a crook, he who does not have the courage to investigate a miracle is gullible and he who is prepared to believe without verification is a fool." Whose wise words are these?

8. Batavia was the capital of the Dutch East India company, known by its Dutch name Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. It was from here that Dutch colonial rule in Asia was coordinated in the 17th and 18th Centuries. What is this Asian city known today as?

9. Who was he? Born in Ahmedabad in western India to an industrialist family, he was educated at Cambridge University in the UK as a physicist and carried out research on cosmic rays under the guidance of Nobel Laureate C V Raman. In 1947, he set up the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad and after the Russian Sputnik launch in 1957, he successfully convinced the Indian government of the importance of a space programme for a developing country like India. This led to the creation of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), his enduring legacy. Who is this father of the Indian space programme?

10. Despite rising living standards and urbanisation, a large majority of Lankan households still use firewood as the source of energy for cooking.

The Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2009/10, conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics, 80 per cent of households still use firewood (when taking the country as a whole). What is second most widely used source of cooking energy in Sri Lanka, used in 16 per cent of households countrywide?

11. On February 6, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II marked 60 years on the British throne, which event was marked by celebrations across the British commonwealth. She became queen on February 6 when her father, King George VI, died.

Her great-great grandmother was the only other British monarch to have achieved this milestone and went on to reign for 63 years and seven months. Who was she?

12. The Kodak Corporation, an American company which is an industry leader in photographic materials and equipment, filed for bankruptcy protection in January this year. Kodak was a pioneer whose founder invented the roll film and whose cameras popularized photography and enabled the emergence of amateur photographers.

During most of the 20th Century, Kodak had a dominant share of photographic film sales in the United States. The company's ubiquity was such that its tagline 'Kodak moment' became a common phrase for any occasion worthy of being preserved with photographs. Who founded Kodak in 1889?

13. Catechism refers to any compendium of questions and answers compiled for the purpose of learning. In 1881, an American retired military officer, journalist, lawyer and spiritual leader compiled a book named 'The Buddhist Catechism' as part of his efforts to revive Buddhist education in Ceylon. The book is still in use, more 130 years later and has been reprinted over 40 times and translated into two dozen languages. Who authored 'The Buddhist Catechism'?

14. Which famous 20th Century American publisher and editor once said: "Journalism is the art of collecting varying kinds of information (commonly called "news") which a few people possess and of transmitting it to a much larger number of people who are supposed to desire to share it."

15. English author Charles Dickens, whose 200th birth anniversary was marked worldwide on February 7, was working on a final novel when he died on June 9 1870: a mystery story which was unfinished at the time of Dickens' death and his ending for it remains unknown.

Creating a conclusion to this story has occupied many writers from the time of Dickens's death to the present day.

What was the title that Dickens gave this last, unfinished novel?