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The nominations for the 2011 Academy Awards are in the books, and we have the usual number of surprises, pleasant and unpleasant, stemming from this morning’s announcement. This column will touch upon all of those as well as discuss expectations for the coming weeks of awards season.

Stating the obvious, this year is going to be a competition between The King’s Speech, True Grit and The Social Network. What we learned this morning is that The Social Network garnered eight nominations including four in major categories, True Grit surpassed it with ten nominations including five in major categories, and The King’s Speech garnered a whopping 12. If a dozen nominations seems like a remarkable total to you, that’s because it is.

Only 11 previous awards contenders have earned more Oscars nominations. Thirteen others have equaled the total; some of the titles include prior heavyweights such as Dances with Wolves, Schindler’s List and Ben Hur. We are talking about some of the most prestigious movies ever made. Last year’s main combatants, Avatar and eventual Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker, were awarded “only” nine nominations each. The King’s Speech is in rarefied air in terms of volume of nominations. As such, it’s the big winner of the morning. Out of the 24 previous feature films to collect at least 11 nominations, only nine failed to win Best Picture. Before you go making bets with your friends about The King’s Speech winning Best Picture, however, consider that the last movie to gather at least this many nominations was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the recipient of 13 two years ago. Only two movies in the history of the industry, Titanic and All About Eve, earned more nominations, yet the Best Picture winner was not The Curious Case of Benjamin Button but rather Slumdog Millionaire, a 10 times nominated title. This would be good news for True Grit and The Social Network.

That’s the big picture perspective. In terms of individual nominations, things largely went according to plan. Out of the nine categories we have been tracking in BOP’s Power Rankings, every nomination was listed in our most recent updates. What this tells you is that there weren’t a lot of jaw dropping revelations in this morning’s announcements. Instead, we had calmer moments of “Oh, that’s interesting.” Chief among these is the nomination of Academy darling Javier Bardem for Biutiful, an otherwise dismissed movie. Conversely, John Hawkes of Deadwood fame has been a role player his entire career and his part in Winter’s Bone is relatively brief. The Academy rightfully rewarded a magnificent performance rather than punish him for his relative obscurity. To a larger point, Winter’s Bone itself is a triumph of overachieving. The awards season darling has earned four Academy Awards nominations, which represents about one nomination per $500,000 of its $2 million production budget.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this morning’s announcement is how the presence of one teen girl impacted both Actress categories. We had engaged in some staff debate over where to slot Hailee Steinfeld of True Grit. She is ostensibly the lead in True Grit, and her actual camera time in the movie justifies this assertion. Still, when nominations were announced, we learned that the Academy had placed her squarely in Best Supporting Actress, which is good news to her, odd as that may sound. As several BOP staffers have noted in recent weeks, Steinfeld has a better chance of winning in Best Supporting Actress than Best Actress. Rather than earning a prestigious nomination in a category Natalie Portman will probably win, Steinfeld is now positioned to compete with Melissa Leo et al in an attempt to become one of the youngest Oscars winners ever.

Steinfeld’s absence in Best Actress frees up a spot for someone, probably Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine, to earn a nomination. Williams will not win, but this boosts her credentials as a two-time nominee, building her overall body of work for the next time she is nominated. She could win that time as Academy perception is cumulative. Conversely, Steinfeld’s presence in Best Supporting Actress kicks someone out, and the victim here is almost certainly Mila Kunis of Black Swan. Apparently, Hailee Steinfeld likes Dawson’s Creek more than That 70s Show.

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