THE 67TH ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS : The Surprises : Some Unexpected Guests Join the Parade : Oscars: ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and Woody Allen’s ‘Bullets Over Broadway’ each earn a startling seven nominations.

If seven is indeed a lucky number, it could prove fortuitous for two of the biggest surprises among the Academy Award nominees.

“The Shawshank Redemption”--considered a sleeper before today--and “Bullets Over Broadway”--a major comeback for Woody Allen--each garnered seven nominations. Only two other films received as many nods: “Forrest Gump” with 13, and “Pulp Fiction” also with seven.

“The Shawshank Redemption” is the hard-to-remember title of a film by a first-time director that few people turned out to see. That the academy awarded it so many nominations--including best picture, best actor (Morgan Freeman), best adapted screenplay and four technical awards--is a scenario befitting a town built on dreams.

“We knew the picture would be a tough sell,” said Castle Rock Pictures president Martin Shafer of his company’s well-reviewed film that cost $25 million to make, but has taken in only $17 million at the box office. “It’s set in a prison. It contains no women. Though the story is uplifting, it sounds depressing and can’t be summed up in a sentence or two.”

Director Frank Darabont adapted the script--the tale of a friendship between a seasoned lifer (Freeman) and a mild-mannered banker convicted of murder (Tim Robbins)--from a Stephen King novella. Castle Rock’s Rob Reiner was so high on the screenplay that he offered Darabont more than $2 million to step aside and give him the reins.

“Of course it was tempting,” said the 36-year-old Darabont. “I make a good living but that was a bucket of dough. More than that, it was Rob Reiner--a first-class filmmaker--asking. So it was a risk turning him down. Still, I couldn’t see selling something I was so passionate about. To Rob’s credit, there wasn’t even a residual whiff of resentment.”

Coincidentally, Darabont was overlooked in the best director category, as was Reiner when his “A Few Good Men” received a best picture nomination in 1992--a trend Shafer finds rather curious.

“Feature films have become a director’s medium,” Shafer said. “If this movie qualifies as best picture, Darabont is the most important part of the equation.”

Woody Allen certainly filled that bill in “Bullets Over Broadway,” whose nominations include best director and best original screenwriting (the latter for Allen and Douglas McGrath).

Before his fall from grace over a bitter child custody case, before his love life became fodder for the tabloids--and a parable for Hollywood genius gone bad--Allen was a darling of the Oscars.

Ten times he received Academy Award nominations for screenwriting. Five times for directing. He won Oscars in both categories. His 1977 film “Annie Hall” won best picture.

But with his highly publicized battle with ex-love Mia Farrow and the embarrassing details about his affair with Farrow’s adopted daughter splashed in the press, the film community began to distance itself from Allen. Some openly wondered if Allen was finished in Hollywood.

The showing by “Bullets Over Broadway” answered those critics.

“It looks like the past is the past,” one studio executive said of Allen. “It looks like the academy was able to separate art from the man.”

“Bullets Over Broadway,” a comedy set in the Prohibition-era world of gangsters and showgirls, also received nominations for three of its actors: Chazz Palminteri for best supporting actor and Dianne Wiest and Jennifer Tilly for best supporting actress.

The film centers on a struggling Greenwich Village playwright (John Cusack) who is given the opportunity to direct his latest drama on Broadway with one string attached: He has to cast an untalented showgirl moll (Tilly) of a gangster. Among the actors he directs is a self-obsessed diva played by Wiest. The playwright ultimately compromises himself when the real artist of the story--the showgirl’s bodyguard (Palminteri)--ends up rewriting the play.

Allen, characteristically, was unavailable for comment Tuesday. His spokeswoman said he was on the set of his latest, as yet untitled, film. “Woody never comments on himself,” she said.

But others said Tuesday that Allen, despite setbacks in his personal life, has solidified his position as one of the most talented and prolific writer-directors in Hollywood.

“Look, a lot of directors make a movie every two years or so,” Palminteri said. “Woody is a guy who has one or two movies out every year. And while he’s directing, he is also writing his next film. He’s just like this prolific machine.”

Mike Medavoy, the former head of TriStar, agreed, saying Allen has quietly gone about his business despite whatever controversy swirls around him.

“Woody basically works uninterrupted,” Medavoy said. “He didn’t want to have his work interrupted. So, he left TriStar and got private financing for his movies.”

Allen’s production deal with TriStar Pictures ended prematurely--he had one movie remaining on a three-picture deal with the studio--and he forged a deal with Jean Doumanian, his longtime friend and former “Saturday Night Live” producer. She raised $20 million in foreign money to finance “Bullets Over Broadway,” which has only grossed about $10 million in the United States. (The producers are banking on foreign receipts to beef up the grosses.) Miramax, an independent known for taking risks with provocative titles such as “The Crying Game” and “The Piano,” acquired U.S. and Canadian distribution rights to the film.

Allen, of course, will probably shun this year’s Academy Awards, choosing as he has in the past to play jazz on his clarinet on Monday night--Oscar night--at Michael’s Pub in Manhattan.

But Woody’s no-show never seemed to matter much to Hollywood as long as his films made audiences think, laugh and debate their merits.

“Hollywood tends to write people off,” said one powerful agent. “It’s clear Woody Allen has not lost his talent.”