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Actress Anne Hathaway announces nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards - Source: Reuters -
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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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