The Philippine Online Chronicles

Although there are 10 nominees instead of the usual five in the running for this year’s Best Picture at the 82^nd Academy Awards, most observers are pegging James Cameron’s sci-fi romance Avatar against Kathryn Bigelow’s war thriller The Hurt Locker for the win.

Cameron and Bigelow, formerly married, have been greeted with accolades for their films throughout the 2009 awards season. The Hurt Locker, “a near-perfect movie” according to TIME magazine, won all three major US critic group prizes (best picture in the National Society of Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and New York Film Critics Circle Awards).

On the other hand, Avatar, which has surpassed Cameron’s Titanic as the highest-grossing movie of all time, won Best Drama Film at the 2009 Golden Globe Awards.

The NY Daily News reports that if Avatar wins this year’s Oscar for Best Picture, it will only be the second fantasy film to do so, following 2003’s Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. If The Hurt Locker wins, it will be the first Iraq War movie to do so.

The other nominations for Best Picture include An Education, Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, A Serious Man, and Up In the Air. Coming in as surprises were the sci-fi social commentary District 9, the Sandra Bullock drama The Blind Side (for which Bullock garnered a first-time Best Actress nomination) and Pixar’s animated feature Up. Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds was also nominated, and according to the blog /Film, can also be counted as a strong contender for Best Picture, as it also places in the Editing and Cinematography divisions.

The Oscar nominations were revealed yesterday at a press conference by Tom Sherak, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and actress Anne Hathaway. According to Sherak, viewers can “expect the unexpected” at this year’s show, to be hosted by comedians Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

A full list of the nominees can be viewed here.