The girl-group musical "Dreamgirls" led the pack for the 79th Academy Awards nominations Tuesday in Los Angeles, with eight nominations including Best Supporting Actor for Eddie Murphy and Best Supporting Actress for Jennifer Hudson.

"Dreamgirls," however, was surprisingly omitted in two major categories -- Best Picture and a Best Director nod for Bill Condon. The bulk of film's nominations came for its music, in the form of three nods for Best Original song.

The multinational ensemble drama "Babel" was next in the nominations with seven.

The film is up for Best Picture, along with the bloody mob drama "The Departed," the quirky road-trip comedy "Little Miss Sunshine," the World War II epic "Letters From Iwo Jima" and the royals-in-crisis drama "The Queen."

Although "Little Miss Sunshine" was nominated for Best Picture, missing the Best Director cut was the husband and wife filmmaking team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Getting the nods instead were Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for "Babel," Stephen Frears for "The Queen" and Clint Eastwood for "Letters From Iwo Jima."

The Sept. 11 docudrama "United 93," which missed out on a Best Picture nomination, instead yielded a Best Director nod for Paul Greengrass.

In the Best Actor category, Leonardo DiCaprio grabbed a nomination for "Blood Diamond," along with Ryan Gosling for "Half Nelson," Peter O'Toole for "Venus," Will Smith for "The Pursuit of Happyness" and Forest Whitaker for "The Last King of Scotland."

The Best Actress nominees were Penelope Cruz for "Volver," Judi Dench for "Notes on a Scandal," Helen Mirren for "The Queen," Meryl Streep for "The Devil Wears Prada" and Kate Winslet for "Little Children."

Streep's nod for "Prada" is her 14th overall nomination, breaking her own record.

Joining Murphy in the Best Supporting Actor race are Alan Arkin for "Little Miss Sunshine, " Jackie Earle Haley for "Little Children," Djimon Hounsou for "Blood Diamond" and Mark Wahlberg for "The Departed."

Facing off against Hudson for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar are Adrianna Barraza for "Babel," Cate Blanchett for "Notes on a Scandal," Abigail Breslin for "Little Miss Sunshine" and Rinko Kikuchi for "Babel."

The three nominees for Best Animated Feature are "Cars," "Happy Feet" and "Monster House."

Among the Best Adapted Screenplay nominees was the controversial mock-documentary "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

Co-written by the film's star, Sacha Baron Cohen, the film has spawned several lawsuits by participants who claim they were duped into thinking they were the subject of a real documentary.

On the real documentary front, former Vice President Al Gore's global warming study "An Inconvenient Truth" scored two nods -- for Best Documentary and Best Original Song for singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge.

"Frida" Oscar-nominee Salma Hayek joined Academy president Sid Ganis for the nomination announcement at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Hollywood, Calif.

Previously announced honorary recipients include composer Ennio Morricone -- for the Academy's Lifetime Achievement Oscar -- and former Paramount chief Sherry Lansing, for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, which is a statuette.

The 79th annual Academy Awards celebration is set for Feb. 25 at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. Ellen DeGeneres is set to host.