2013 Best Actor Oscar nominees

With the most important envelope in Hollywood set to be opened just a few days away, here’s a look at the nine movies nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award.

Amour

What it’s about: Elderly Parisian couple Anne and Georges face health crises and mortality when Anne suffers a series of strokes. Director Michael Haneke's unsparing, clear-eyed look at love in the worst of times stars Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Review: Michael Haneke's brilliant look at a couple's decline features superb performances by Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Rivas.

AP

Performance for the Age(s): Best Actress nominee Emmanuelle Riva in a scene from ‘Amour.’

Claire Folger/Claire Folger

Ben Affleck, may have been shut out of the Best Director category, but ‘Argo’ has emerged as a favorite in the Best Picture competition.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

What it’s about: A fantastical, heartfelt slice-of-life set in the southern Louisiana bayou, where a five-year-old named Hushpuppy and her father struggle to find a good life for themselves and their community. The little girl's imagination and steeliness is useful when her father suffers a heart attack and she has to fend for herself.

Mary Cybulski

Academy Award nominee Quvenzhane Wallis (l.) and Dwight Henry in ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild.’

's brazen, edgy, action-filled western-blaxploitation adventure stars Jamie Foxx as Django, a freed slave who joins a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz), eventually finding their way to the plantation where Django's wife is being held.SMPSP

Making history: (L-R) Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘Django Unchained.’

A closer look: Even Quentin Tarantino thought he might have gone too far as he prepared to make “Django Unchained, ” opening Tuesday.

He had written scenes of a chain gang of slaves en route to auction, slogging through the mud of Greenville, Miss. (“Like a black Auschwitz, ” Tarantino termed it), and of more slaves picking cotton in a field under scorching sun with armed overseers guarding them on horseback.

But the idea of shooting those scenes in Louisiana, where most of “Django” was filmed, with black actors being asked to portray slaves, unnerved the usually self-confident director. READ MORE

Les Misérables

What it’s about: In the years surrounding the French revolution, a prisoner-turned-businessman spends years trying to amend the decision that ruined a young mother’s life - while he’s pursued by a dogged policeman. Tom Hooper's pop-opera film of the beloved musical is told almost entirely through song.

Laurie Sparham/AP

Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of Fantine — a struggling, sickly mother forced into prostitution in 1800s Paris in ‘Les Miserables’ — has made her an Oscar frontrunner.

Life of Pi

Jake Netter/AP

While the novel was once considered unfilmable, ‘Life of Pi’ director Ang Li somehow managed to get the big-screen adaptation afloat.