“When Academy Awards officials announced in 2002 that the current Oscar season would be shortened by a month when the ceremony was shifted from late March to Feb. 29, there were concerns that smaller films, dependent on slow-building word of mouth, would suffer.” But yesterday’s Oscar announcement of this year’s nominations should allay many of those fears, as art house favorites like Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation led the pack, with big-budget, big-studio fare like Cold Mountain and The Last Samurai failing to garner the expected slew of nominations.