Ten films up for Best Picture Oscar 

Oscar voters broke with several traditions, including handing nominations for best film to two science-fiction movies, among them box-office smash hit Avatar, which earned nine nominations overall.
   
The Iraq war movie The Hurt Locker also had nine nominations, including one for Kathryn Bigelow, who will be competing against ex-husband James Cameron, the mastermind of Avatar, for the best director award.
   
Bigelow's nomination was a rarity.

Only three other women, including Sofia Coppola for 2003's Lost in Translation, have been nominated for best director in the 80-plus years since the world's top film honors have been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

No woman has ever won.
   
Joining Avatar, which has taken in more than $2.8 billion at box offices, and The Hurt Locker in the best film field is the Disney animated movie Up, about an elderly man and young boy who go on an adventure after he ties helium-filled balloons to his house.

Up, which also was nominated for best animated movie, is only the second animated film behind 1991's Beauty and the Beast to earn a nod for best picture.
   
Meryl Streep's performance in Julie & Julia earned her 16th Oscar nomination, including a 13th for lead actress.

She passed Katharine Hepburn with 12 in the top category to become the most-nominated lead actress in the Oscar history.
   
The list of 10
   
Academy voters expanded field of best film nominees from five movies to 10 this year.

Other films on the list include Quentin Tarantino's World War II fantasy Inglourious Basterds , which had eight nominations.
   
Also in the running are the corporate downsizing film Up in the Air and urban drama Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, with six nominations each.

In a mild surprise, South African sci-fi film District 9 also made the best film list.
   
Only two other sci-fi films have been nominated for best motion pictures, Star Wars and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
   
Rounding out the best film field was girl's coming-of-age tale An Education and football flick The Blind Side, which also garnered Sandra Bullock a nomination for best actress.
   
"The voters have given us a little bit of everything ... a good sample of the movies they loved and had an impact on them," said Academy President Tom Sherak.
   
Veteran Oscar watcher Tom O'Neil of awards website TheEnvelope.com called the race a close battle between major studio film Avatar and low-budget flick The Hurt Locker.
   
"We have a classic David and Goliath match-up between the biggest movie in history and a film that ... had no stars and is about Iraq, which is a cursed subject at the Oscars," he said.
   
Nominations for best actor to Jeff Bridges playing a drunk country singer in Crazy Heart, George Clooney as a corporate hatchet man in Up in the Air , Jeremy Renner as a bomb specialist in The Hurt Locker, Colin Firth for A Single Man and Morgan Freeman for Invictus.
   
Joining Streep, who portrayed chef Julia Child in Julie & Julia and Bullock as a wealthy woman who plucks a homeless teen off the streets and helps him become a sports star, on the list of best actress nominees were Helen Mirren in The Last Station, Carey Mulligan for An Education and newcomer Gabourey Sidibe in Precious.

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