"Argo," "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Les Miserables" may have  been disappointed by the Directors Branch of the Academy on Thursday, but all three films received nominations for the top film editing award at the ACE Eddie Awards nominations were announced on Friday.

In the rare case of guild nominations announced after the Oscar nominations, the American Cinema Editors also honored the dramas "Lincoln," "Life of Pi" and "Skyfall" and the comedies or musicals "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," "Moonrise Kingdom," "Silver Linings Playbook" and "Ted."

The ACE Eddie Awards category for Best Edited Feature...

"It's bittersweet for me," said Jessica Chastain of her Best Actress nomination for "Zero Dark Thirty." "I'm so excited, but I also feel the shock of Kathryn not being nominated."

Kathryn, of course, is "ZDT" director Kathryn Bigelow, whose failure to receive a Best Director nomination was one of the major surprises of the Oscar nominations. Bigelow's film is up for five awards, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay (Mark Boal) and Best Actress (Chastain), but its director was left out of a baffling category that also overlooked Ben Affleck for "Argo" and Tom Hooper for "Les Miserables."

"The film is so fearless and bold...

Did Academy voters just clear a path to the stage for Steven Spielberg and "Lincoln?"

Or did they indicate that Spielberg's historical drama has unexpectedly serious  challengers not in the two CIA-themed dramas expected to be best-pic contenders, but in David O. Russell's delicious bipolar comedy "Silver Linings Playbook" or Ang Lee's visionary "Life of Pi?"

With a stunning set of nominations highlighted by a Best Director category that almost no one could have envisioned, Oscar voters upended conventional wisdom and placed a huge obstacle in the way of Ben Affleck's "Argo" and Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," as well as Tom Hooper...

Roger Deakins received his 11th nomination and Janusz Kaminski his fifth from the American Society of Cinematographers, which included the "Skyfall" and "Lincoln" cinematographers on its list of nominees for the 27th ASC Awards for Outstanding Achievement.

Other nominees were Seamus McGarvey for "Anna Karenina," Danny Cohen for "Les Miserables" and Claudio Miranda for "Life of Pi."

“The films our members have nominated are visually distinctive, and very diverse: a theatrical epic, a grand musical, an imaginative 3-D fable, a sweeping biographical drama, and a stylish spy thriller,” said ASC president Stephen Lighthill in the press release announcing the...