LOS ANGELES: Dark comedy “Birdman” and stylish crime caper “The Grand Budapest Hotel” topped the Oscars nominations list Thursday with nine each, firing the starting gun on the home stretch of Hollywood’s awards race.

In second place was World War II code-breaking thriller “The Imitation Game,” with eight nominations. Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” and coming-of-age drama “Boyhood” each earned six nods.

The five films were all shortlisted for best picture, along with US civil rights drama “Selma,” Stephen Hawking biopic “The Theory of Everything” and jazz drumming saga “Whiplash.”

The golden statuettes will be handed out on Feb. 22 at the Dolby Theater in downtown Hollywood.

For best actor, “Birdman” star Michael Keaton and Britain’s Eddie Redmayne (“The Theory of Everything“) — Golden Globes winners just a few days ago — are up against Steve Carell (“Foxcatcher“), Bradley Cooper (“American Sniper“) and Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Imitation Game“).

The best actress race includes two former Oscar winners — Marion Cotillard for “Two Days, One Night” and Reese Witherspoon (“Wild“).

They will compete against Globes winner Julianne Moore (“Still Alice“), along with two British actresses — Felicity Jones (“The Theory of Everything“) and Rosamund Pike (“Gone Girl“).

The makers of both “Birdman” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Wes Anderson, are both in the race for best director along with Richard Linklater for “Boyhood,” Bennett Miller for “Foxcatcher” and Morten Tyldum for “The Imitation Game.”

Five movies that tackle the cruelties of existence with humanity and humor are finalists for the Academy Award for best foreign-language film.

The finalists announced Thursday include director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Leviathan,” a tragic parable of small-town Russian corruption; Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Ida,” in which an aspiring Polish nun confronts dark truths about her family and her country; and “Tangerines,” an Estonian-Georgian film by Zaza Urushadze set in post-Soviet Georgia of the early 1990s.

The other contenders are Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako’s “Timbuktu,” a powerful film about the takeover of northern Mali by Islamic militants, and Argentine filmmaker Damian Szifron’s explosive comic romp “Wild Tales.”

The nominations for supporting actor in a motion picture are: Robert Duvall, “The Judge“; Edward Norton, “Birdman“; Mark Ruffalo, “Foxcatcher“; Ethan Hawke, “Boyhood“; and J.K. Simmons, “Whiplash.”

The nominees announced for supporting actress are: Patricia Arquette, “Boyhood“; Laura Dern, “Wild“; Keira Knightley, “The Imitation Game“; Emma Stone, “Birdman“; and Meryl Streep, “Into the Woods.”

The Oscar nominees — chosen by the 6,000-plus members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — were revealed in a pre-dawn ceremony in Beverly Hills.

Voting for the 87th Oscars starts on Feb. 6 and closes on Feb. 17.

This year’s crop of hotly-tipped movies is heavy on true stories: several of the films on the Oscars best picture shortlist were based on real-life events.