Best Picture: “Avatar,” “The Blind Side,” “District 9,” “An Education,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Precious: Based on the Novel ’Push’ by Sapphire,” “A Serious Man,” “Up,” “Up in the Air.”

Actor: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”; George Clooney, “Up in the Air”; Colin Firth, “A Single Man”; Morgan Freeman, “Invictus”; Jeremy Renner, “The Hurt Locker.”

Actress: Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side”; Helen Mirren, “The Last Station”; Carey Mulligan, “An Education”; Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”; Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia.”

Supporting Actor: Matt Damon, “Invictus”; Woody Harrelson, “The Messenger”; Christopher Plummer, “The Last Station”; Stanley Tucci, “The Lovely Bones”; Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds.”

Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, “Nine”; Vera Farmiga, “Up in the Air”; Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Crazy Heart”; Anna Kendrick, “Up in the Air”; Mo’Nique, “Precious: Based on the Novel ’Push’ by Sapphire.”

Directing: James Cameron, “Avatar”; Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”; Quentin Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds”; Lee Daniels, “Precious: Based on the Novel ’Push’ by Sapphire”; Jason Reitman, “Up in the Air.”

Foreign Language Film: “Ajami,” Israel; “El Secreto de Sus Ojos,” Argentina; “The Milk of Sorrow,” Peru; “Un Prophete,” France; “The White Ribbon,” Germany.

Adapted Screenplay: Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, “District 9”; Nick Hornby, “An Education”; Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche, “In the Loop”; Geoffrey Fletcher, “Precious: Based on the Novel ’Push’ by Sapphire”; Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, “Up in the Air.”

Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, “The Hurt Locker”; Quentin Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds”; Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, “The Messenger”; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, “A Serious Man”; Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Tom McCarthy, “Up.”

Animated Feature Film: “Coraline”; “Fantastic Mr. Fox”; “The Princess and the Frog”; “The Secret of Kells”; “Up.”Art Direction: “Avatar,” “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” “Nine,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “The Young Victoria.”

Cinematography: “Avatar,” “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “The White Ribbon.”

Sound Mixing: “Avatar,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Star Trek,” “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

Sound Editing: “Avatar,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Star Trek,” “Up.”

Original Score: “Avatar,” James Horner; “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Alexandre Desplat; “The Hurt Locker,” Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders; “Sherlock Holmes,” Hans Zimmer; “Up,” Michael Giacchino.

Original Song: “Almost There” from “The Princess and the Frog,” Randy Newman; “Down in New Orleans” from “The Princess and the Frog,” Randy Newman; “Loin de Paname” from “Paris 36,” Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas; “Take It All” from “Nine,” Maury Yeston; “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart,” Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.

Costume: “Bright Star,” “Coco Before Chanel,” “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” “Nine,” “The Young Victoria.”

Documentary Feature: “Burma VJ,” “The Cove,” “Food, Inc.” “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” “Which Way Home.”

Documentary (short subject): “China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province,” “The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner,” “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant,” “Music by Prudence,” “Rabbit a la Berlin.”

Film Editing: “Avatar,” “District 9,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Precious: Based on the Novel ’Push’ by Sapphire.”

Makeup: “Il Divo,” “Star Trek,” “The Young Victoria.”

Animated Short Film: “French Roast,” “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty,” “The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte),” “Logorama,” “A Matter of Loaf and Death.”

Live Action Short Film: “The Door,” “Instead of Abracadabra,” “Kavi,” “Miracle Fish,” “The New Tenants.”

Visual Effects: “Avatar,” “District 9,” “Star Trek.”

The Academy Awards have been meaningless for awhile now but this list of nominees is one of the worst yet. Talk about pandering.

Wow. District 9 getting an Academy nod? That's pretty sweet. Quick predictions on the ones I'm familiar with:

Best Picture: Up In the Air
Best Actor: Jeff Bridges
Best Actress: Even though she doesn't deserve it...Sandra Bullock
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz
Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique
Director: Jason Reitman (I'd go with Cameron, but I just don't see them not giving best director to someone who didn't do the motion picture)
Adapted Screenplay: Up In the Air
Original Screenplay: Up
Animated Feature: Coraline

Hrm. I kind of like The Best Picture expansion in theory, but there's still weird problems that were around in past that are further magnified with 10. When Up is nominated for best picture it makes the race for best animated picture seem silly. If Up wins Best Picture then it should just be considered Best Animated. If another movie wins Best Animated then a) it should have been nominated for Best Picture or b) it looks like a vote on "balance" and not artistc merit. Sure it's nice that Coraline can say it has an Oscar nomination, but one of it's competitors was also nominated for BEST OVERALL

I've felt this way about Foreign Films for a while. There's been Foreign Films nominated in the past that blew the American BP nominees out of the water. I think with 10 you have room to nominate 5 American films and use the remaining 5 slots to spotlight foreign and animated if there are any worthy and there usually are.

I think that is the only nomination that makes me excited.

Oh, that and Ajami in the Foreign Film category.



That is Disney's category to win or lose, my friend. If Up! does not win, then The Princess & The Frog certainly will, IMO.

Yeah, if Up doesn't win best animated after also being nominated best overall, it means there is something wrong with the basic system somewhere.

I was thinking Princess & The Frog, which I didn't get a chance to see thanks to holiday retail and me moving out to Florida, but Coraline was one of those movies that gained a really good following. Although, I can definitely see the Academy give it to Disney (specifically Princess, to welcome them back to the animation fold.)

Ok, I'll bite. Which of those nominees is pandering? It was a very weak year, and I think those best picture nods are about as good as you can get.

I'd say best picture is between Avatar & The Hurt Locker, with Inglorious Basterds being the dark horse.

I'm pretty much okay with everything except Sandra Bullock and "The Blind Side". Really? Hey why not nominate "New Moon" while you're at it!

The BP nominations are fine, how on Earth are they pandering?

If D9 wins, I'll be absolutely elated. IB should also walk away with a bunch of wins.

As for Avatar, I really don't know where to put it. It'so good, and yet, the over all plot and dialogue can't even begin to hold up to the others. I dunno, it's going to be interesting either way.

It's not any more pandering than they've done in the past. If you're angry over this line-up it's a good chance you may have never liked the Oscars ever.

There will be those upset with Avatar getting a BP nod, but its one of those films that is such a humongous event you can't ignore it. I mean, it is the all time box office champ and pretty much revolutionized the industry. I don't think its one of the best movies of the year, but the Academy has to acknowledge its success.

Also, sadly I think Sandra Bullock is a lock to win. She has cleaned up in a lot of the pre-oscar awards and it just seems like its her year...ugh.

Basterds was the best movie I saw last year. I'm hoping that the insane amount of Nazi slaughtering gets QT a metric shit ton of votes.

Oof, I just noticed that The Blind Side was nominated for BP. That is just inexcusable.

Anyways, here are my predictions for the major categories:

Best Picture: “Avatar”

Actor: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”

Actress: Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side”

Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds.”

Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious: Based on the Novel ’Push’ by Sapphire.”

Directing: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”

Foreign Language Film: “Un Prophete,” France (This is just a wild guess...)

Adapted Screenplay: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, “Up in the Air.”

Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds”

Animated Feature Film: “Up.”

First, it wasn't a weak year by any standard. Second, as for pandering, the Academy is still reeling from the backlash against them for not nominating Wall-E and Dark Knight and Iron Man for bigger awards last year. They took a lot of heat for only nominating films with low box office receipts and ignoring the mass movements. Their knee-jerk response was to open the Best Picture category up to 10 films and make a calculated (and, I think, disingenuous) attempt to nominate more popular films to a) save the Oscar telecast from plummeting ratings and b) not appear to be snooty. I know the Oscars have never truly been about the greatest movies winning the award, though they've done a decent job of it (glaring exceptions like CRASH nonewithstanding).

Nominating THE BLIND SIDE is pandering. That film is garbage. Sandra Bullock is a fine actress but her performance in that film was sentimental pablum, riddled with cliched hamtasticness.

AVATAR deserves every technical nomination possible, as well as a possible director nomination, but Best Picture, really? The film is not loved for its plot, dialogue, or acting -- in those respects it is bland, baldly derivative, and weak.

DISTRICT 9 also sticks out. For a film to be a Best Picture, it needs more than technical merits. D9 is a good movie but that's it, just good.

UP IN THE AIR is also a very average movie but since it's timely, it is getting a lot of love. Does anyone here really think they'll think about, or want to watch that movie, again in six years?

Also, nominating Penelope Cruz for NINE instead of BROKEN EMBRACES is weird. Everyone think NINE is crap.

And I love Jeff Bridges but I am tired of Oscar bait performances arising out of mediocre films (I'm thinking THE WRESTLER, THE QUEEN, LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, etc)

I'll get off my soapbox now.

Last year's line up (or lack thereof) was far worse (really bad) to illustrate your point.



Entirely agree with this and the reasons behind extending the Best Picture category.

Haven't seen Sandra Bullock's performance in The Blind Side but seeing her nominated for Best Actress and winning awards in the lead up to the ceremony is surreal for me with all those fucking rom-coms she's inflicted upon the world.

The only two glaring examples I see of pandering are The Blind Side as Best Picture and Penelope Cruz getting a Supporting Actress nod for Nine. While a better case could probably be made for Invictus taking the last BP nod over Blind Side, Cruz's nomination is the worse of the two based on what I've heard about the movie being awful. That's clearly a case of wanting some sex appeal for the cameras and hoping Cruz wears a great dress on Oscar night.

When it comes to Best Pictures, the Oscars are screwed no matter how they go. If they only have 5 noms to give, someone is going to get left out. But with 10 noms, you're going to get a couple of rotten egss in there. I suppose they could go with a 7-movie catergory, but there really is no way to win on that one.

The Oscars are disingenuous by nature and unless dismantled and redone by scratch by someone with no stake in them, they'll stay that way. You're always going to find reason to dispute them. And so it goes.

I remember the year "Amelie" was voted for both Best Foreign Film & Best Picture OVERALL. It was the only film from the foreign category that also made it to the "big one".
So, of course, it wins Foreign, right? Nope. Loses Foreign to "No Man's Land" which was great too but, um, that doesn't make sense!

If you're not pandering to mainstream with The Blind Side, you'll be pandering to Scorcese fans with Aviator, or faux-Indy nerds with Sideways....I mean you can't really win. When I complain about the Oscars it's like being a WWE fan. I just want them to make me believe it's legit.


I don't think Amelie was nom'd for Best Picture. It just had a ridiculous amount of people in love with it and it lost (best foreign) to a movie that people hadn't heard of.

Yeah, I haven't seen Up yet, it's just, by definition, if it's the only animated film "good" enough to get a BP nom, it has to win Animated, right?

I'd forgotten about the Amelie doing that.

Hurt Locker should win everything. That was by far the best movie.

It was weak by his standard. I thought it was weaker than some of the past years by mine. I'm not saying you're wrong to believe it wasn't a weak year. I'm saying it's wrong to say his standard doesn't count.

A lot people on the internet say these awards are meaningless now, but no matter what, every year I see a large amount people overjoy or outrage(usually this one) about the results/nominations. It still must mean something.

I do believe people take these awards too seriously though. Awards shows are lame, and the Oscars aren't the end-all-be-all.

I do get a kid out of Sandra Bullock being simultaneously nominated for a Razzie and a Oscar this year. Avatar winning best picture would create the most controversy so I'm hoping for that result even though I don't have little desire to see it.

Avatar is definitely MOTY for me, I hope it wins every award its nominated for, especially Best Picture.

The Blind Side was pap, but you can't really knock Bullock's performance. As someone from the deep south, I promise you she totally nailed the character of the bored, rich Christian Southern Belle housewife. I know actual people like that, and I bought her in that role, 100%. There have been many better actresses in much better movies who have whiffed on that role. I was impressed.

Stanley Kubrick never won the best director or best picture award, so why would anybody care about he Oscars?

Same thing with the Grammy's, Brian Wilson only won one award.

I haven't seen Julie & Julia, but I'm pulling for Streep because, as weird as this is to say about someone with 2 Oscars, she really deserves more than she has.

I think there's a high possibility of that happening.

I haven't seen Blind Side, but the criticisms for her nomination that I have read aren't saying she did a bad job.



You could find a glaring omission from almost any type of media that gives away awards and use the same type of argument. "Macho Man Randy Savage isn't in the WWE Hall of fame, so why would anybody care about the WWE Hall of Fame?" and etc.

People still care though.

I might cave and finally watch Avatar so I can have valid reasons for my disdain. Haha

I still find the Academy Awards a fair barometer about mainstream films. Sure they cater to their own, but that's kind of obvious. They have a TV show to sell people. Still a useful enough measurement of knowing where to look inside of Hollywood for a year.

I'm glad Star Trek got 4 nods, even if it's all the technical categories. As a lifelong fan I thought it was a lot of fun after I had very serious doubts going in, but it's not like it really deserves nods for any of the big awards. And they won't win any of those 4 with the James Cameron buzz saw in full effect.

I'll probably watch this year since I'm on a giant cinemaphile kick, which I haven't done in a long time. The 10 best picture nods is a bad idea, and I can't see it lasting.

Frankly, I'm pulling for Up for best pic, slim though its chances are. Not only is it a better movie than Avatar, but it's a huge thumb in the eye to the people who created a Best Animated Feature category to ghettoize cartoons and keep them from competing with "real movies."

I didn't love it as much as others, but I was hoping that Moon would get nominated for something. I've heard that the company who back it(Sony?) didn't send out screeners for the Oscars. That sucks. Visually speaking, I don't how they created Moon with the modest budget they had. Some scenes in it were just spectacular.

I think there can be an argument for something other than Up winning best animated, but that argument has to stress that there is something innately unique about animated movies relative to a more general category. It's a bit of a headache.

"Blind Side" is like the cinematic equivalent of Taylor Swift. And looking at Bullocks IMDB resume, jeez talk about some clunkers.

The Academy ALWAYS panders. Good lord. It's as if people want it to be this golden entity of what's right in movies and it's far from it. It pandered this year to the thought that movies that should be nominated weren't included last year, so they upped it to 10. It pandered last year to manly beyond my wildest expectations rights when it gave Sean Penn the Oscar for Milk because of Brokeback Mountain, when everybody in the building thought Mickey Rourke should have won. The whole Michael Moore issue? The idea that foreign actors couldn't be seen on par with American actors, which led to the Benigni win? Lord of the Rings taking home basically everything it was nominated for when nobody thought a fantasy film should be considered?

It's happened, it's going to continue to happen.

I agree that my biggest disappointment is MOON's lack of nominations, probably one of 5 best films I saw last year.

I would LOVE to see Mr. Fox beat Up, but I can't see that happening.

Basterds was the best movie I've seen out of the noms. I've yet to see The Hurt locker though, so my opinion on that could change. As long as Christoph Waltz wins, I won't go crazy.

Yeah the way Master and Commander: Far Side of the World got shafted for Return of the King is sure to live in movie imfamy for hundreds of years to come.

Can't pass comment on other films but I can on The Hurt Locker. I'm not one for noticing how good looking films are usually, but this feels like you really are in the battlefield. It's a tale of camaraderie, tension between allies, the horrors of war and what they can inflict on the mind. I don’t normally watch this type of film but I loved it. Hoping it does well at the Oscars as it sure as hell deserves to.

The only love for In The Loop is an adapted screenplay nom? Peter Capaldi should've gotten a Best Supporting Actor nod.

Hey, In the Loop got a nomination, be glad about that. I haven't seen any love for it anywhere. One of the best comedies I saw this year and it got zero love.

Correct. Or if it was, the Academy was sufficiently embarrassed by the contradiction that they purged the nomination from their records.

And everybody's commenting on the potential oddity with Up, but isn't Avatar pure CGI animation too? If so, how can it be nominated for Best Picture but not Best Animated Feature?

Because Ripley is in it. And the boyfriend from The Other Sister.

No, Avatar still has plenty of scenes with the cameras pointed at real actors, occasionally even with them standing on real sets. That's close enough; it doesn't matter how much CGI is in a film as long as there are still live-action elements, it's not considered an animated feature.

But with the way CGI is rapidly evolving, eventually there will come a movie which blurs that line so hard that there will be plenty of controversy and shouting about it. Already there's some discussion with rotoscoped films like A Scanner Darkly: considering that was really filmed with real actors in real sets, is it fair to call it an animated film when the drawing part is laid down on the footage in postproduction? Others also muddle the old definitions in different ways, like Waltz with Bashir, which is actually an animated documentary (if that makes any sense). And eventually Andy Serkis or somebody will put on such a great performance with a motion-capture CGI character, combined with more advanced technology than Gollum had, and there will be an outcry in many circles to make mo-cap performances eligible for Best Actor awards.

To name an even more insidious thing: what about Best Cinematography? In so many movies today, special effects can be used so subtly that you often never even notice them. Very few Hollywood films are made now without some kind of digital tinkering in post-production. Ergo, the idea of the "purity" of the Cinematography award is really dead and buried. It's plain impossible to be sure if you're looking at something that was filmed with a real lens, or something that never existed outside of the editor's computer. When you've got no way to tell who did what job, it's awfully difficult to justify giving awards that strictly apply to only one category but not another overlapping one.

Ah. For some reason I had thought that it was like Beowulf, where they motion-captured the human actors then animated characters based on that. My mistake.

That doesn't appear to be the case, not according to the rules on the Academy's website. For a file to qualify for Best Animated Feature, they just require that a significant number of the major characters be animated. and for there to be some animation on-screen for at least 75% of the time. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? would certainly qualify under those rules, despite there being a major live-action character; Avatar I can't say, not having seen it.

It would be close, but it depends on exactly what they count as "animation" in terms of the running time. Does it mean that "we must be looking at an entirely artificial image", and that having a live human in the shot would disqualify it? The rules seem damnably vague on that score. On the other hand, if something like "live actors in a shot which includes animated or CGI elements" counts as animation, then yeah Avatar would be close to qualifying. As would the Star Wars prequels and Sin City and Lord of the Rings and countless other films today which lean heavier and heavier on the green screen.

I can't see it. "...animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time" (emphasis mine). It's a bit of a stretch to read "figure in" as "wholly comprise". Seems to me that if there's any significant animated elements on-screen, animation is figuring in to the picture.

Yeah, but I think all of those films are disqualified by the other requirement, that a significant number of the major characters be animated. The Star Wars prequels had, what, Jar Jar Binks and Yoda? Lord of the Rings had pretty much just Gollum; I'm not sure Sin City had any animated characters (the Yellow Bastard, maybe?). But I've not seen Avatar, and have no idea what portion of the cast is live action or animated.

The problem is, a lot more of it is animated now than many people realize. My favorite example is a small independent comedy called You Kill Me, about Ben Kingsley as an alcoholic hitman who's forced to go to AA. It's a fairly low budget film, only four million bucks. It's set in modern-day San Francisco, with absolutely no fantastical elements. And it's loaded with a metric fuckton of CGI effects that you can't even notice. There's fake snow on the ground, trees in full springtime bloom having their leaves surreptitiously removed, absolutely real-looking locations which never existed outside of a computer. This was all done because it was actually cheaper and more convenient to do all that stuff in post-production than to do it during the shoot. There's even CGI gunshot and squib effects for the shootout scenes, since it's gotten to the point that it's easier to have an actor wave around a rubber gun and then just edit it all in later than to actually be using blanks and explosives on the set. Literally half that film has fakery in the shot somewhere.

And if that's a little indy flick, just imagine how much subtle CGI something like Transformers is shoving into the frame that we never catch. Or, to use another example: I wish I could find the article now, but I did read about a whole shitload of computer effects being used in The Dark Knight. Now tell me: when and where did that happen? Aside from the Bat-bike, it was all so seamless that you can't spot it at all.


But once again, we run into a grey area talking about exactly what counts as "animated". What about those parts with Christopher Lee's head pasted on top of a stunt man's body, swinging around a nonexistant fantasy weapon? Or the countless times when the hobbits were digitally shrunk to appear in the same shots with taller guys? Or any time the characters are in an action scene and are leaping around on crumbling pillars and dancing over fiery lava and otherwise doing a bunch of shit which clearly was a CGI mockup of a person and not the real actor? They're not entirely animated, no, but the line is getting thinner and thinner. The digital characters in Avatar are so closely modeled on the actors who played them that even their facial twitches and eye movements have been copied down to the milimeter.

Or, here's another even better example: Terminator Salvation. I'm talking about the part where Arnold '84 shows up. Now, clearly that's not really Schwarzenegger chasing Christian Bale. They didn't shoot one frame of film with the actual guy there. But it's still Arnold's real performance, albeit manipulated in a new way.

Heck, imagine this: say ten years from now, we have another Heath Ledger moment where an important actor dies in the middle of shooting. Who's to say that they couldn't put together a digital composite, combining a lifelike CGI model of the actor's looks and voice... but have another actor provide the acting via motion-capture technology? That level of sophistication doesn't quite exist in our computers now, but it soon will. When actors fear that they may be replaced someday by computers, I don't think it's just paranoia anymore. If you want to do a new Alien movie but Sigourney Weaver is 90 years old, you could simply build a digital copy of her younger self and have her play the entire role without the camera ever once glimpsing how she really looks like. They already did something close to that with her alien body in Avatar, after all. This isn't science fiction any more, it's really going to be within the realm of possibility, and at the current rate of progress it won't take long.


Roughly 50/50. There are more live actors who have names and dialogue; aside from the 7 main alien characters most of the cat-people are just nameless extras in the background. However, it does feel like more screen time is spent with the animated characters onscreen than not. So it's a tricky call.

At least thats two of us that have seen it.

Like the past two Best Supporting Actor categories at the Oscar where it was a one horse race (Bardem for No Country For Old Men in 2008 and Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight last year), the same again will happen this year. Christoph Waltz will win for Inglorious Bastards and so he should as he's fantastic in it.

I predict Avatar to win Best Picture and Best Director and if there's going to be a split between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, Avatar wins Best Picture and Bigelow wins Best Director for The Hurt Locker. Ideally I'd like The Hurt Locker to win as I thought it was brilliant.

I think Jeff Bridges is almost nailed on to win Best Actor though that was said about Mickey Rourke last year. Second favourite I'd guess would be Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker.