'Avatar' and 'The Hurt Locker' top a well-chosen Oscar slate

Fantasy versus reality. Blockbuster versus indie. Ex-husband versus ex-wife.

One of the most intriguing awards season showdowns in recent memory reached its culmination on Tuesday morning, as Avatar, directed by James Cameron, and The Hurt Locker, directed by Cameron’s ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, picked up nine Oscar nominations each, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The Hurt Locker -- a you-are-there Iraq War drama -- grossed less in its entire run than Avatar did in its first half-day of release. But The Hurt Locker swept the year-end critic’s prizes and Bigelow recently became the first woman to win the Director’s Guild prize. In which case, might we be on the verge of witnessing one of the greatest David slays Goliath upsets in movie history? (Speaking as someone who found Cameron's blue people a little boring, I sure hope so.)

Then again, don’t count out Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which found both commercial and critical success last year, and which was nipping at the leaders’ heels on Tuesday morning with eight nominations, including Best Picture, Director and Best Supporting Actor (the almost certain-to-win Christoph Waltz).

Indeed, as the Academy expanded its Best Picture slate from five nominees to ten, what is most striking is how many good choices were made. Oscar voters embraced both the year's best and most challenging films (including the tough-to-watch drama Precious, which scored six nominations and the Coen Brothers’ nearly forgotten, utterly magnificent A Serious Man, which squeaked into the Best Picture and Best Screenplay races). But they also rallied around those movies that struck an unexpected chord with moviegoers. The Blind Side, a naïve, but undeniably popular sports drama earned two nominations, for Best Picture and Best Actress. The sci-fi adventure District 9 -- an uber-nerdy, sometimes goofy creature feature that in years past would have been completely spurned by voters -- picked up four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Perhaps most remarkably: The Academy aggressively resisted the familiar Oscar bait, those big, empty behemoths that you’re supposed to think are brilliant simply because their marketing campaigns tell you so (see, in recent years, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, The Hours and Master and Commander).

To wit: Clint Eastwood’s deadly dull Invictus only scored acting nominations; the misbegotten musical Nine had to settle for a few technical nods and a Best Supporting Actress mention; and Peter Jackson’s madly misconceived The Lovely Bones earned just one nomination, for Stanley Tucci’s creepy supporting turn.

Many purists griped that moving from five Best Picture nominees to ten would dilute the Oscar brand. But I’m starting to wondering if this decision might actual end up saving the brand -- and make the Oscars relevant and of-the-moment in a way that haven't been in years.

In the acting categories, the Academy offered up fewer surprises, but still did well by highlighting a number of deserving performers. In Best Actor, Freeman will compete against Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), George Clooney (Up in the Air), Colin Firth (A Single Man) and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker). It’s Bridges to lose, though watch out for a late-breaking upset by Renner, who functions as this year’s Adrien Brody -- an actor until now mostly unknown whom Hollywood is now eager to embrace.

The Best Actress category offered a now-familiar line-up: two newcomers, Carey Mulligan (An Education) and Gabourey Sidibe (Precious); two veterans, Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia) and Helen Mirren (The Last Station; and one veteran who is a newcomer to the Oscar game, Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side). Bullock is surging, but Streep (who earned her sixteenth nomination this year, but hasn’t won since 1982’s Sophie’s Choice) will be hard to topple. My early money is on Meryl.

The Academy made a few business-as-usual choices: Matt Damon’s supporting performance in Invictus seems like a pointless choice, especially since it caused the excellent Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker) to miss making the cut; Penelope Cruz acquitted herself well enough in Nine, but that slot should have gone to Samantha Morton (The Messenger) or Julianne Moore (A Single Man). On the other hand, the supporting categories probably don’t matter so much this year: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) and Mo’Nique (Precious) are pretty much mortal locks to take the Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress prizes, respectively.

Elsewhere, movies lovers had plenty to cheer about: Two nominations (Best Cinematography and Best Foreign Film) for Michael Haneke’s chilling and brilliant The White Ribbon; four nods for Pixar’s heart-piercing Up -- the first animated film to make it into the Best Picture category since 1991’s Beauty and the Beast; and a Best Original Song nomination for Fort Worth’s T-Bone Burnett, whose collaboration with Ryan Bingham, The Weary Kind from Crazy Heart, seems poised to win that category.

The little gold men will be handed out on March 7 -- and for the first time in years, it should be worth watching to the very end.