Los Angeles  - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button led the Oscar nominations with 13 nods Thursday, ahead of Slumdog Millionaire and Milk.

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Adapted from a 1921 short story by US literary legend F Scott Fitzgerald, the movie stars Brad Pitt as a man born in 1918 with the physical appearance of an old man and the ability to speak. He proceeds to age in reverse, enjoying a wonderful romance for a few years when he is roughly the same age as his wife, building a fortune, before he ends his life as a baby.

Los Angeles  - Canadian comedy star Mike Myers is unlikely to get any love from the Oscars for his recent movie The Love Guru.

But he can console himself with a leading seven nominations from this year's Golden Raspberry Awards which commemorate the very worst the film world has to offer.

The box office bomb about a self-help romance advisor swept all the major categories including acting dishonours for Myers, Verne Troyer, Oscar winner Ben Kingsley and Jessica Alba.

Los Angeles  - At the distinctly un-starlike hour of 5:30 am (1330 GMT) Thursday morning, the Oscar season will officially move into high gear.

That's when Forest Whitaker, who won an Oscar in 2006's The Last King Of Scotland, will unveil the nominations for the 2008 Academy Awards from Hollywood's Samuel Goldwyn Theatre.

Forest, 47, will be reading out the names at the press conference alongside Sid Ganis, who heads the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Los Angeles  - For the first time, fans had their say and voted high-flying Spaniard Rudy Fernandez of the Portland Trail Blazers as the fourth member to participate in the Slam Dunk Competition on Saturday night of NBA All-Star Weekend, February 13-15 in Phoenix, Arizona.

"It's very exciting for me to play in the slam dunk contest for the fans and for me," told Fernandez local reporters at a Monday afternoon press conference following the announcement. "It's my dream, you know."

Los Angeles  - Nintendo, the world's largest maker of game consoles, continued to dominate the US video game market in 2008, according to figures released Friday.

The top seller was Nintendo's Wii console which sold 10,224,000 units in the US last year. This was followed by the Nintendo DS portable gaming unit, which sold 9,951,000 units, according to figures released by researcher NPD Group.

Third place was taken by Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the next three spots were taken by Sony machines for the Playstation Portable, Playstation 3 and Playstation 2.

Park City/Los Angeles  - Outgoing US president George W Bush saw art as a political threat, Hollywood legend Robert Redford said, adding that he believed president-elect Barack Obama will come to the rescue of the US arts scene by increasing support for it.

Redford's hopeful political prognosis was made at the opening of the Sundance Film Festival Thursday night. Redford founded the event 25 years ago and built it into the most important independent cinema festival in the US. This year it is screening 118 features and 90 short films.