Tomorrow morning, Tuesday February 2nd, the official nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards will be announced live. The 2010 Oscar presentation will take place Sunday, March 7, 2010, hosted by none other than the comedic pair of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.
Last year’s Academy Awards saw the lovable Hugh Jackman as host and the big categories of Best Picture and Best Director went to Slumdog Millionaire and Danny Boyle. Sean Penn took home another Best Actor award and Kate Winslet won Best Actress for The Reader.
This year we have some big competition with the biggest box office film of all time in Avatar making a run for the awards and its creator James Cameron making a big returning splash into Hollywood after his last showing being the the previous biggest film of all time and multiple Oscar winner in Titanic. James Cameron took home the Golden Globes for his sci-fi epic but with the Directors Guild of America giving credit to Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker this weekend, it’s now a possible favorite. We also can’t forget Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air starring everyone’s favorite George Clooney.
Keep in mind, this year’s structure of the awards in key categories will be slightly different. The big change of course comes with the attempt at increasing ratings and hype surrounding the major category of Best Picture where for the first time since the forties there will be not 5 nominees, but 10!
This is an obvious attempt to give more credit to the more popular box office hits rather than the smaller art-house and films and period pieces. Last year saw a bit of an uproar from many moviegoers over the snub of The Dark Knight and The Wrestler, not being nominated for key categories with those spots going to vastly less popular films like The Reader.
We can expect the five shoe-in nominations to be Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, Precious and Inglourious Basterds and the other five aren’t so clear cut. Up has a chance to get nominated for this and win best animated feature although in my opinion it doesn’t deserve to be in the Best Picture category. Wouldn’t it be cool to see District 9 in there?
UPDATE: Here are the Nominees for the 2010 Oscars:
BEST PICTURE
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
Up In The Air
Up
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
A Serious Man
BEST DIRECTOR
James Cameron Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels Precious
Jason Reitman Up In The Air
LEADING ACTOR
Jeff Bridges Crazy Heart
George Clooney Up In The AIr
Colin Firth A Single Man
Morgan Freeman Invictus
Jeremy Renner The Hurt Locker
LEADING ACTRESS
Sandra Bullock The Blind Side
Helen Mirren The Last Station
Carey Mulligan An Education
Gabourey Sidibe Precious
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
Penélope Cruz Nine
Vera Farmiga Up In The Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick Up In The Air
Mo’Nique Precious
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
The Messenger (Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman)
A Serious Man (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)
Up (Bob Peterson, Pete Docter & Tom McCarthy)
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
District 9 (Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell)
An Education (Nick Hornby)
In the Loop (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci & Tony Roche)
Precious (Geoffrey Flecther)
Up In The Air (Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner)
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Ajami (Israel)
El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina)
The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)
Un Prophéte (France)
The White Ribbon (Germany)
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Burma VJ
The Cove
Food, Inc.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home
For the rest of the 2010 Oscar Nominees, go HERE.
Now that you know the nominees – what do you think? How awesome is it to see District 9 receiving a Best Picture nod? And are you blind-sided that The Blind Side made the list? Sound off and let us know!
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Follow me on Twitter for my thoughts on the nominations @rob_keyes and come back for my live coverage of the Oscars in March!