Business Briefing | Retailing: Best Buy Shares Rally on Improved Holiday Sales

The Best Buy Company had better-than-expected holiday sales, setting off a gain of $2, or 16.4 percent, in its stock price, to $14.21 a share on Friday. The holiday quarter accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s revenue last year. The chain said that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 1.4 percent for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5. The company’s performance in the United States was flat. The chief executive, Hubert Joly, said in a statement that the result was better than the last several quarters. A Morningstar analyst, R. J. Hottovy, said the results showed that some of Best Buy’s initiatives, like more employee training and online price matching helped increase sales.

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The Caucus: Senator Rockefeller Is Said to Be Retiring

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the scion of the Rockefeller family who established himself as a liberal voice in Congress, will announce his retirement on Friday after five terms in the Senate, Democratic officials said.

The decision was not a surprise. In June, Mr. Rockefeller took to the Senate floor to oppose Republican efforts to block a regulation on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, declaring, “The coal industry today would rather attack false enemies and deny real problems than find solutions.” The speech was greeted with shock in coal-dependent West Virginia and led immediately to speculation that he would not seek a sixth term in 2014.

The decision could create an opening for Republicans in a state that is increasingly tilting from its once-solid Democratic roots. President Obama won less than 36 percent of the vote there in November after Republicans waged a relentless campaign against what they called the president’s “war on coal.” Republicans persuaded their preferred challenger, seven-term Representative Shelley Moore Capito, to enter the Senate campaign in November after she had declined several previous Senate bids.

Mr. Rockefeller, the great-grandson of the oil tycoon, was always an unlikely representative of his hardscrabble state. He served as a VISTA volunteer in 1964, taking up President John F. Kennedy’s call for service, then went on to be elected to the state’s House of Delegates and eventually its governorship.

In the Senate, he made his mark as a chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and on domestic policy as a champion of President Bill Clinton’s failed effort to enact near-universal health insurance coverage, then Mr. Obama’s successful effort nearly two decades later.

As a voice on intelligence matters, he initially supported the invasion of Iraq but became a dogged critic of the war effort and what he came to see as the false pretenses and trumped-up intelligence that took the country to war.

His voting record and recent tilt against coal had made re-election a tough fight. He is also 75 years old. With Democratic voter registration still outnumbering Republicans two-to-one in the state, Democrats believe they can keep the seat — and could possibly have an easier time with a lesser known candidate unencumbered by his connections to Mr. Obama.

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BlackBerry Z10 shown off in leaked marketing materials

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Seattle bankruptcy hearing to decide Tully's sale

SEATTLE (AP) — The auction for beleaguered coffee company Tully's will likely conclude Friday in federal bankruptcy court, with an ownership group led by actor Patrick Dempsey in position to take over the chain. But Starbucks isn't' out of the running.

Dempsey — dubbed "McDreamy" in the "Grey's Anatomy" hospital TV drama — claimed victory last week after an auction.

But a company that teamed up with Starbucks to bid for the Tully's chain filed an objection Wednesday. AgriNurture Inc. says it's still willing to proceed with its combined bid with Starbucks of about $10.6 million. The bid from Dempsey's company, Global Baristas LLC, was for $9.2 million.

Tully's has 47 shops in Washington and California with more than 500 employees. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October.

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The New Old Age Blog: Taking a Zen Approach to Caregiving

You try to help your elderly father. Irritated and defensive, he snaps at you instead of going along with your suggestion. And you think “this is so unfair” and feel a rising tide of anger.

How to handle situations like this, which arise often and create so much angst for caregivers?

Jennifer Block finds the answer in what she calls “contemplative caregiving” — the application of Buddhist principles to caregiving and the subject of a year-long course that starts at the San Francisco Zen Center in a few weeks.

This approach aims to cultivate compassion, both for older people and the people they depend on, said Ms. Block, 49, a Buddhist chaplain and the course’s lead instructor. She’s also the former director of education at the Zen Hospice project in San Francisco and founder of the Beyond Measure School for Contemplative Care, which is helping develop a new, Zen-inspired senior living community in the area.

I caught up with Ms. Block recently, and what follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Let’s start with your experience. Have you been a caregiver?

My experience in caregiving is as a professional providing spiritual care to individuals and families when they are facing and coping with aging and sickness and loss and dying, particularly in hospital and hospice settings.

What kinds of challenges have you witnessed?

People are for the most part unprepared for caregiving. They’re either untrained or unable to trust their own instincts. They lack confidence as well as knowledge. By confidence, I mean understanding and accepting that we don’t know all the answers – what to do, how to fix things.

This past weekend, I was on the phone with a woman who’d brought her mom to live near her in assisted living. The mom had been to the hospital the day before. My conversation with the daughter was about helping her see the truth that her mother needed more care and that was going to change the daughter’s responsibilities and her life. And also, her mother was frail, elderly, and coming nearer to death.

That’s hard, isn’t it?

Yes, because we live in a death-denying society. Also, we live in a fast-paced, demanding world that says don’t sit still — do something. But people receiving care often need most of all for us to spend time with them. When we do that, their mortality and our grief and our helplessness becomes closer to us and more apparent.

How can contemplative caregiving help?

We teach people to cultivate a relationship with aging, sickness and dying. To turn toward it rather than turning away, and to pay close attention. Most people don’t want to do this.

A person needs training to face what is difficult in oneself and in others. There are spiritual muscles we need to develop, just like we develop physical muscles in a gym. Also, the mind needs to be trained to be responsive instead of reactive.

What does that mean?

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re trying to help your mother, and she says something off-putting to you like “you’ve always been terrible at keeping house. It’s no wonder you lost my pajamas.”

The first thing is to notice your experience. To become aware of that feeling, almost like being slapped emotionally. To notice your chest tightening.

Then I tell people to take a deep breath. And say something to themselves like “soften” to address that tightness. That’s how you can stay facing something uncomfortable rather than turning away.

If I were in this position, I might say something to myself like “hello unhappiness” or “hello suffering” or “hello aging” to tether myself.

The second step would be curiosity about that experience. Like, wow, where do I feel that anger that rose up in me, or that fear? Oh, it’s in my chest. I’m going to feel that, stay with it, investigate it.

Why is that important?

Because as we investigate something we come to understand it. And, paradoxically, when we pay attention to pain it changes. It softens. It moves. It lessens. It deepens. And we get to know it and learn not to be afraid of it or change it or fix it but just come alongside of it.

Over hours, days, months, years, the mind and heart come to know pain. And the response to pain is compassion — the wish for the alleviation of pain.

Let’s go back to what mother said about your housekeeping and the pajamas. Maybe you leave the room for five minutes so you can pay attention to your reaction and remember your training. Then, you can go back in and have a response rather than a reaction. Maybe something like “Mom, I think you’re right. I may not be the world’s best housekeeper. I’m sorry I lost your pajamas. It seems like you’re having a pretty strong response to that, and I’d like to know why it matters so much to you. What’s happening with you today?”

Are other skills important?

Another skill is to become aware of how much we receive as well as give in caregiving. Caregiving can be really gratifying. It’s an expression of our values and identity: the way we want the world to be. So, I try to teach people how this role benefits them. Such as learning what it’s like to be old. Or having a close, intimate relationship with an older parent for the first time in decades. It isn’t necessarily pleasant or easy. But the alternative is missing someone’s final chapter, and that can be a real loss.

What will you do in your course?

We’ll teach the principles of contemplative care and discuss them. We’ll have homework, such as ‘Bring me three examples of someone you were caring for who was caring toward you in return.’ That’s one way of practicing attention. And people will train in meditation.

We’ll also explore our own relationship to aging, sickness, dying and loss. We’ll tell our stories: this is the situation I was in, this is where I felt myself shut down, this was the edge of my comfort or knowledge. And we’ll teach principles from Buddhism. Equanimity. Compassion. Deep inner connectedness.

What can people do on their own?

Mindfulness training is offered in almost every city. That’s one of the core components of this approach.

I think every caregiver needs to have their own caregiver — a therapist or a colleague or a friend, someone who is there for them and with whom they can unburden themselves. I think of caregiving as drawing water from a well. We need to make sure that we have whatever nurtures us, whatever supplies that well. And often, that’s connecting with others.

Are other groups doing this kind of work?

In New York City, the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care educates the public and professionals about contemplative care. And in New Mexico, the Upaya Zen Center does similar work, much of it centered around death and dying.

People who want to read about this might want to look at a new book of essays, “The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work” (Wisdom Publications, 2012).

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DealBook: Wells Fargo Profit Jumps 24% in Quarter, Driven by Mortgage Gains

8:46 a.m. | Updated

Wells Fargo reported $5.1 billion in profit for the fourth quarter on Friday, a 24 percent increase, driven by the bank’s lucrative mortgage business.

Seizing on low-interest rates that have spurred a flurry of refinancing activity, the bank again notched record profits. For the last 12 quarters, profits at the bank have increased.

In this latest quarter, Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, reported earnings of 91 cents a share, which exceeded analysts’ expectations. Ahead of the report, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters estimated that the bank would report earnings of 89 a share.

Wells Fargo, unlike many of its rivals, has been able to steadily increase its revenue. The first bank to release fourth-quarter earnings, Wells Fargo reported $21.95 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, up 7 percent from a year earlier.

Much of the revenue gains stemmed from the bank’s consumer lending business, as borrowers jumped on record low interest rates to refinance their mortgages. Wells Fargo, which dominates the market as the nation’s largest mortgage lender, notched $125 billion in mortgage originations, up from $120 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011. Refinancing applications accounted for nearly 75 percent of that total.

The big profit in the group came from the extra money that Wells Fargo makes bundling the mortgages into bonds and selling them to the government. In the fourth quarter, the bank reported $2.8 billion of so-called net gains on its mortgages activities, up 51 percent from the previous year.

Under the tenure of its chief executive, John G. Stumpf, Wells Fargo has aggressively expanded into the mortgage market, a strategy that might help the bank surpass its rivals in profits, notably JPMorgan Chase.

Wells Fargo’s net interest margin, a closely watched profit metric that measures the difference between the interest the bank collects and the interest it pays on its own borrowings, was down slightly to 3.56 percent, from 3.89 percent a year earlier.

Profit in the community banking division, which spans Wells Fargo’s retail branches and mortgage business, increased 14 percent to $2.9 billion.

The bank successfully courted more cash from depositors, adding $72 billion in total core checking and savings deposits than a year earlier.

“The company’s underlying results were driven by solid loan growth, improved credit quality, and continued success in improving efficiency,” Wells Fargo’s chief financial officer, Tim Sloan, said in a statement.

The bank has benefited from sweeping federal stimulus initiatives that have buoyed the mortgage business. The Treasury Department has helped spur Americans to refinance their mortgages.

Wells Fargo is the reigning titan in the mortgage industry, generating roughly a third of all the mortgages across the United States. Mortgage originations continued to climb, up 4 percent to $125 billion.

Adding to its mortgage-related profit, Wells Fargo reported a $926 million profit from its servicing business, in which the bank collects payments from homeowners. That’s up roughly 6 percent from a year earlier.

Alongside the consumer loan business, Wells Fargo had gains in its wealth management business, a particular focus for the bank to defray the impact of federal regulations that dragged down profits elsewhere.

Still, Wells Fargo’s profit from residential mortgages could wane this year if the Federal Reserve halts its extensive bond buying spree.

Working to move beyond the mortgage crisis woes that have dogged the bank, Wells Fargo has been brokering deals with federal regulators. Wells Fargo was one of 10 banks that signed onto an $8.5 billion settlement this week with the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve over claims that shoddy foreclosure practices may have led to the wrongful eviction of homeowners.

The sweeping federal pact ends a deeply flawed review of millions of loans in foreclosure that was mandated by federal regulators in 2011. The review, which was ended this week, began in November 2011 amid mounting public fury that bank employees were churning through hundreds of foreclosure filings without reviewing them for accuracy.

In addition to the settlement, the bank set aside $1.2 billion to prevent foreclosures.

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The Carpetbagger: 'Lincoln' Leads Oscar Field With 12 Nominations

Start your Oscar Ballot here.

LOS ANGELES — Torture. Terror. Depression. Revolt. Where’s Uggie the dog when you need him?

The 85th Academy Awards season jolted into place early Thursday morning, as the heaviest number of Oscar nominations — including nods for best picture — went to “Lincoln,” about a president’s struggle with civil war; “Life of Pi,” about a shipwreck survivor and a tiger; “Silver Linings Playbook,” a comedy, of sorts, about mental illness; and “Les Misérables,” filled with songs of the oppressed.

Close behind were “Argo,” about political captivity; “Amour,” a French-language film about death; and “Django Unchained,” about slavery and retribution.

“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” about a child’s encounters with rising floodwaters in the South, and “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the murky pursuit of a national enemy, also scored heavily and were nominated for best picture.

But the morning’s real surprise was a triple snub in the best director category: Neither Kathryn Bigelow, who directed “Zero Dark Thirty,” nor Ben Affleck, who directed “Argo,” nor Quentin Tarantino, who directed “Django Unchained,” were included among the five directing nominees.

Those were Steven Spielberg, for “Lincoln,” Ang Lee, for “Life of Pi,” Michael Haneke, for “Amour,” David O. Russell, for “Silver Linings Playbook” and Benh Zeitlin for “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

In all, nine films received best picture nominations, in a field that can include as many as ten or as few as five, depending on how voters from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spread their hand.

The nominations were announced at the Academy’s Beverly Hills headquarters in an early morning ceremony that paired the actress Emma Stone with the host of this year’s Oscar telecast, Seth MacFarlane. The unusual inclusion of Mr. MacFarlane, the creator of the animated “Family Guy” TV show, was an effort by the Academy to increase his public profile; only once before (in 1972) has a host announced nominees.

Mr. MacFarlane worked hard to squelch skepticism about his selection as host and give a hint of what will come on Oscar night, cracking a series of one-liners that mocked the self-seriousness of the Oscars and the job of moviemaking. The directing nominees, he quipped, are “the very best at sitting in a chair and watching other people make a movie.” Of the foreign film “Amour,” he said, “The last time Austria and Germany co-produced something was Hitler.” (Cue nervous laughter from the 400 or so reporters in the room.)

Hollywood now faces a somewhat longer-than-usual campaign period. A new digital voting system — despite its reported hitches — allowed the Academy to announce nominees two weeks earlier than last year, and more than six weeks before the awards ceremony, which ABC will broadcast on Feb. 24.

“Lincoln,” directed by Steven Spielberg, had gone into the morning as the picture to beat, and it remained a leader, with 12 nominations. But it barely outpaced “Life of Pi,” which beat the expectations by coming up second, with 11 nominations in all, even as “Zero Dark Thirty,” an early favorite, fell into the pack, with just five.

Mr. Spielberg’s directing nomination was his seventh, while Daniel Day-Lewis received his fifth best actor nomination, this time for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. (He has won twice.) Sally Field was among the “Lincoln” nominees, as a supporting actress for playing Mary Todd Lincoln, as was Tony Kushner, for writing the film’s adapted script.

All of that, plus an aggressive promotional campaign that found the film playing as a civics lesson in the United States Senate, have helped create a sense that “Lincoln” is the most important picture in a self-consciously important field.

In Oscar terms, however, it remains to be seen if “Lincoln” is more like “The Artist,” which last year established dominance (with help from its cheery Jack Russell terrier co-star, Uggie) and went on to win, or Mr. Spielberg’s own “Saving Private Ryan,” which seemed to lead, but watched “Shakespeare in Love” take the best picture Oscar in 1999.

Though no slouch when it comes to importance, “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, may have been hurt by controversy, as several senators and a number of political critics tore into the film for its portrayal of the use of torture.

Senators Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin and John McCain last month insisted that Michael Morell, the acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, explain whether Ms. Bigelow and the film’s writer, Mark Boal, had perhaps been “misled” about the efficacy of torture by the C.I.A. But Oscar voters gave the film nominations for writing and nominated its star, Jessica Chastain, as best actress.

“Zero Dark Thirty” may yet connect with a larger audience – it opens in wide release on Friday – but the remaining best actress nominees all hailed from movies most Americans have not seen: Jennifer Lawrence was nominated, for “Silver Linings Playbook”; “Emmanuelle Riva,” for “Amour”; Quvenzhané Wallis (a 9-year-old), for “Beasts of the Southern Wild”; and Naomi Watts, for “The Impossible.”

For best actor, Bradley Cooper was nominated for “Silver Linings Playbook”; Joaquin Phoenix for “The Master,” about the relationships among characters in a cult; Hugh Jackman, for “Les Misérables”; and Denzel Washington, for “Flight.”

One of only two African American nominees, Mr. Washington, who played a drunken but skilled airline pilot in “Flight,” had received five nominations in the past, winning twice. (Among perennials, Meryl Streep was missing this year, though she had a Golden Globe nomination for her work in “Hope Springs.”)

Among the huge winners on Thursday was the Walt Disney Company, which had three of the five nominees in the best animated feature category — “Brave,” “Frankenweenie,” and “Wreck-It Ralph.” DreamWorks Animation, another powerhouse in the field, had none. “The Pirates! Band of Misfits,” released by Sony Pictures, and “ParaNorman,” from Focus Features, were also among the animation nominees.

“Silver Linings Playbook,” from the Weinstein Company, also came up a winner, as it took seven nominations in the top 11 categories, which were announced in a live television broadcast. Robert De Niro was nominated as best supporting actor for “Silver Linings Playbook,” and Jacki Weaver was nominated as best supporting actress. In all, it was the first film to get nominations in all four acting categories since “Reds,” which was released in 1981, according to Libby Wertin, a researcher with the Academy.

It slightly outstripped “Lincoln” in the major categories, and handily outweighed “Life of Pi,” which had no acting nominees.

Some contenders were emphatically factored out on Thursday. “Moonrise Kingdom,” which had been on some lists as a best picture contender, received a nomination only for its original screenplay, by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola.

In keeping with recent tradition, the Academy also brushed off the best box-office performers. There were no nominations in the major categories for “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “The Dark Knight Rises” or “Skyfall.”

The Oscar process has been especially rough this year, as the Academy began phasing out paper ballots in favor of online voting. The idea was to get quicker results, which allowed the group to break precedent by announcing its nominations in advance of the rival Golden Globes ceremony, set for Sunday.

But some of the Academy’s roughly 6,000 potential voters remained unaware of the shift until balloting was near. Others had difficulty accessing a heavily secured voting system. And the Oscar nominating vote was ultimately extended by a day — after the documentary branch members got an extension for voting on their shortlist, which was selected under new rules.

On the documentary front, the new process, which was meant to broaden the pool of voters making a first-cut of the candidates, yielded what appeared to be a fairly conventional list of either culturally hip or politically progressive nominees. Those were “5 Broken Cameras,” about Palestinian resistance to the Israeli army; “The Gatekeepers,” about the Israeli security apparatus; “How to Survive a Plague,” about AIDS; “The Invisible War,” about rape in the United States military; and “Searching for Sugar Man,” about the lost career of the singer Sixto Rodriguez.

If “Lincoln” were to win the top Oscar, it would be Disney’s first best picture other than those served up by the Miramax unit, which it acquired from Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and then sold. “Lincoln” was distributed by Disney and produced by DreamWorks Studios with the involvement of companies like Participant Media and 20th Century Fox.

Tom Hooper was bypassed as the director of “Les Misérables,” from Universal. But the film’s presumed strength among actors — Anne Hathaway was nominated as best supporting actress, along with Mr. Jackman’s best actor nomination — still make it a force to be reckoned with.

“Skyfall” will presumably make an appearance on ABC’s Oscar telecast, as part of a special retrospective on the 50-year-old James Bond franchise. Any other year, a Bond montage might be a routine bid for the pop audience. But in the wake of mass killings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., the tribute may pose a challenge for the show’s producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, who will have to decide whether to serve up their killer-spy with or without guns.

For Mr. MacFarlane, who was nominated as writer of the lyrics for “Everybody Needs a Best Friend,” from “Ted,” the bigger challenge may be the need to wring laughs out of so many serious pictures. “Amour” finds an aging husband caring for his dying mate. In “Argo,” Iran’s revolutionary crowds crash the American embassy and begin the hostage crisis that ended the Jimmy Carter presidency.

But he is trying.

“If you don’t know who I am, just pretend I’m Donny Osmond,” he said, getting mileage from a crack about his own baby face. “We’ll get along fine.”

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Amazon steps up digital music competition with Apple

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc unveiled a service that increases competition with Apple Inc’s dominant iTunes store.

Amazon launched Amazon AutoRip, which gives customers free digital versions of music CDs they purchase from the world’s largest Internet retailer.

The digital music files are automatically stored in customer libraries in remote datacenters run by Amazon, where they are available to play or download immediately through the company’s Cloud Player service, the company said.

Amazon customers who have bought AutoRip-eligible CDs at any time since the company started selling discs in 1998 will also get digital versions of that music stored in their Cloud Player libraries for free, the company added.

More than 50,000 albums are available for AutoRip and Steve Boom, head of digital music at Amazon, said the company focused on music that has been the most popular among its customers during the past 15 years.

Albums include “21″ by Adele; “Overexposed” by Maroon 5; “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd and “Thriller” by Michael Jackson.

Boom declined to estimate how many CDs Amazon expects to digitize through the new service. However, he noted that the company has sold hundreds of millions of CDs to millions of customers.

“When we picked those 50,000 titles we focused on having a substantial majority of our physical CD sales covered,” he added.

Amazon is hoping the new service boosts digital music sales and encourages more people to use its cloud music service.

“People will be exposed to Cloud Player and our digital music offering, which is a good thing,” Boom said. “We want to take this global.”

Amazon’s MP3 digital music business has been around since 2007, but its market share is less than 15 percent, according to The NPD Group. Apple’s iTunes store is the clear leader, with over 50 percent of the market.

Amazon is making a bigger push against iTunes now that the company’s Kindle Fire tablets are in more consumers’ hands and its Cloud Player music application is available on a range of other mobile devices, including Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; editing by Andrew Hay)

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'Lincoln' leads Oscars with 12 nominations

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — The Civil War saga "Lincoln" leads the Academy Awards with 12 nominations, including best picture, director for Steven Spielberg and acting honors for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.

Also among the nine nominees for best picture Thursday: the old-age love story "Amour"; the Iran hostage thriller "Argo"; the independent hit "Beasts of the Southern Wild"; the slave-revenge narrative "Django Unchained"; the musical "Les Miserables"; the shipwreck story "Life of Pi"; the lost-souls romance "Silver Linings Playbook"; and the Osama bin Laden manhunt chronicle "Zero Dark Thirty."

Harvey Weinstein produced two of the nine best picture nominees — "Django Unchained" and "Silver Linings Playbook" — and was naturally pleased.

"I am blown away! I can't say thank you enough to the Academy for their support of our films," he said in a statement. "We have a tremendous group of actors and filmmakers who we had the pleasure of working with this year and I am so happy that their achievements are being recognized."

"Life of Pi" surprisingly ran second with 11 nominations, ahead of "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Les Miserables," which had been considered potential front-runners.

More surprising were snubs in the directing category, where three favorites missed out: Ben Affleck for "Argo" and past Oscar winners Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty" and Tom Hooper for "Les Miserables." Bigelow was the first woman ever the win the directing Oscar for 2009's "The Hurt Locker," while Hooper won a year later for "The King's Speech."

The best-picture category also had surprising omissions. The acclaimed first-love tale "Moonrise Kingdom" was left out and only got one nomination, for original screenplay. Also snubbed for best-picture was "The Master," a critical favorite that did manage three acting nominations for Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Two-time winner Spielberg earned his seventh directing nomination, and also in the mix are past winner Ang Lee for "Life of Pi" and past nominee David O. Russell for "Silver Linings Playbook." The other slots went to surprise picks who are first-time nominees: Michael Haneke for his French-language "Amour" and Benh Zeitlin for "Beasts of the Southern Wild."

"Amour" also was a best-picture surprise. The film, which won the top prize at last May's Cannes Film Festival, mainly had been considered a favorite in the foreign-language category, where it also was nominated. "Amour" had five nominations, including original screenplay and best-actress for Emmanuelle Riva.

The year's second-biggest box-office hit, "The Dark Knight Rises," was shut out entirely, even for visual effects. The omission of its predecessor, "The Dark Knight," from best-picture consideration for 2008, was largely responsible for the expansion of the Oscar category from five nominees to 10 the following year. "The Dark Knight" had earned eight nominations and won two Oscars.

Chronicling Abraham Lincoln's final months as he engineers passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, "Lincoln" stars best-actor contender Day-Lewis in a monumental performance as the 16th president, supporting-actress nominee Field as the notoriously headstrong Mary Todd Lincoln and supporting-actor prospect Jones as abolitionist firebrand Thaddeus Stevens.

Joining Day-Lewis in the best-actor field are Bradley Cooper as a psychiatric patient trying to get his life back together in "Silver Linings Playbook"; Hugh Jackman as Victor Hugo's tragic hero Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables"; Phoenix as a Navy vet who falls in with a cult in "The Master"; and Denzel Washington as a boozy airline pilot in "Flight."

Cooper had been a bit of a longshot. John Hawkes, a potential best-actor favorite, missed out for his role as a man in an iron lung aiming to lose his virginity in "The Sessions."

Nominated for best actress are Jessica Chastain as a CIA operative hunting bin Laden in "Zero Dark Thirty"; Jennifer Lawrence as a troubled young widow struggling to heal in "Silver Linings Playbook"; Riva as an ailing woman tended by her husband in "Amour"; Quvenzhane Wallis as a spirited girl on the Louisiana delta in "Beasts of the Southern Wild"; and Naomi Watts as a mother caught up in a devastating tsunami in "The Impossible."

Best actress had a wild age range: Riva is the oldest nominee ever in the category at 85, while Wallis is the youngest ever at 9.

Along with Field, supporting-actress nominees are Adams as a cult leader's devoted wife in "The Master"; Anne Hathaway as an outcast mother reduced to prostitution in "Les Miserables"; Helen Hunt as a sex surrogate in "The Sessions"; and Jacki Weaver as an unstable man's doting mom in "Silver Linings Playbook."

Besides Jones, the supporting-actor contenders are Alan Arkin as a wily Hollywood producer in "Argo"; Robert De Niro as a football-obsessed patriarch in "Silver Linings Playbook"; Hoffman as a dynamic cult leader in "The Master"; and Christoph Waltz as a genteel bounty hunter in "Django Unchained."

"Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane, who will host the Feb. 24 Oscars, joined Emma Stone to announce the Oscar lineup, and he scored a nomination himself, original song for "Everybody Needs a Best Friend," the tune he co-wrote for his big-screen directing debut "Ted."

"That's kind of cool I got nominated," MacFarlane deadpanned at the announcement. "I get to go to the Oscars."

Walt Disney predictably dominated the animated-feature category with three of the five nominees: "Brave," ''Frankenweenie" and "Wreck-It Ralph." Also nominated were "ParaNorman" and "The Pirates! Band of Misfits."

"I'm absolutely blown away," Rich Moore, director of "Wreck-It Ralph" said by phone. "It is weird at 5:30 in the morning to hear Emma Stone say your name. It's surreal."

"Lincoln" is Spielberg's best awards prospect since his critical peak in the 1990s, when he won best-picture and directing Oscars for "Schindler's List" and a second directing Oscar for "Saving Private Ryan." The 12 nominations for "Lincoln" matched Spielberg's personal best on "Schindler's List," which won seven Oscars.

Spielberg's latest film could vault him, Day-Lewis and Field to new heights among Hollywood's super-elite of multiple Oscar winners.

A best-picture win for "Lincoln" would be Spielberg's second, while another directing win would be his third, a feat achieved only by Frank Capra and William Wyler, who each earned three directing Oscars, and John Ford, who received four.

"Lincoln" also was the ninth best-picture nominee Spielberg has directed, moving him into a tie for second-place with Ford. Only Wyler directed more best-picture nominees, with 13.

Day-Lewis and Field both have two lead-acting Oscars already, he for "My Left Foot" and "There Will Be Blood" and she for "Norma Rae" and "Places in the Heart." A third Oscar for either would put them in rare company with previous triple winners Ingrid Bergman, Walter Brennan, Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Katharine Hepburn is the record-holder with four acting Oscars.

An Oscar for Jones would be his second supporting-actor prize; he previously won for "The Fugitive."

"Lincoln" composer John Williams — whose five Oscars include three for the music of three earlier Spielberg films, "Jaws," ''E.T. the Extra-terrestrial" and "Schindler's List" — earned his 43rd nomination for best score, extending his all-time record in the category.

The Oscars feature a best-picture field that ranges from five to 10 films depending on a complex formula of ballots from the 5,856 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Winners for the 85th Oscars will be announced Feb. 24 at a ceremony aired live on ABC from Hollywood's Dolby Theatre.

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AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire contributed to this report.

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Institute of Medicine Studying Concussions in Young Athletes

The Institute of Medicine, a federally financed research group, has started a 15-month investigation into sports-related concussions sustained by young athletes.

An ad hoc committee of scientists, which held its first meeting Monday, “will conduct a study on sports-related concussions in youth, from elementary school through young adulthood, including military personnel and their dependents,” according to the Web site of the institute, part of the National Academies of Science.

The committee will look at the causes of concussions and the “relationships to hits to the head or body during sports, and the effectiveness of protective devices and equipment.”

The committee will also review screening, diagnosis, treatment and long-term consequences of concussions and head hits.  

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