Sci-fi extravaganza Avatar, Iraq drama The Hurt Locker and coming-of-age story An Education earned eight nominations apiece in the race for the British Academy Film Awards, Britain's equivalent of the Oscars.
Avatar, An Education and The Hurt Locker have each received eight nominations for the Orange British Academy Film Awards in 2010, Britain's equivalent of the Oscars.
District 9 has seven nominations; Inglourious Basterds and Up in the Air have six nominations apiece; and Coco Before Chanel, Nowhere Boy, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire and Up each receive four nominations. The British awards, known as BAFTAs, are handed out two weeks before the Academy Awards in Hollywood and considered an important indicator of likely Oscar success.
Avatar has been nominated in the categories Best Film, Cinematography, Editing, Music, Production Design, Sound and Special Visual Effects. James Cameron is nominated for Director.
An Education has been nominated for Best Film, Outstanding British Film, Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design and Make Up & Hair. Lone Scherfig is nominated for Director, Alfred Molina for Supporting Actor and Carey Mulligan for Leading Actress.
The Hurt Locker is nominated for Best Film, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Sound and Special Visual Effects. Kathryn Bigelow is nominated for Director and Jeremy Renner for Leading Actor.
Completing the Best Film line up are Up in the Air and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, both of which are also nominated for Adapted Screenplay.
Up in the Air is also nominated for Editing as well as receiving three performance nominations: Leading Actor for George Clooney and Supporting Actress for both Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick.
Up against George Clooney and Jeremy Renner in the Leading Actor category are: Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, Colin Firth for A Single Man and Andy Serkis for Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. Crazy Heart and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll are also both nominated for Music.
Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique have been nominated for Leading Actress and Supporting Actress respectively for Precious.
District 9 has been nominated for Director for Neill Blomkamp, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Production Design, Editing, Sound and Special Visual Effects.
Inglourious Basterds has nominations for Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing and Production Design; Quentin Tarantino is nominated for Director and Christoph Waltz for Supporting Actor.
Audrey Tautou is nominated for her Leading Actress performance in Coco Before Chanel and the film has been nominated for Costume Design, Make Up & Hair and Film Not in the English Language.
Also nominated for Leading Actress are Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia and Saoirse Ronan for The Lovely Bones. Saoirse's co-star Stanley Tucci is nominated for Supporting Actor, where he competes against Christian McKay for Me and Orson Welles and Alec Baldwin for It's Complicated.
Nowhere Boy is nominated for Outstanding British Film and Anne-Marie Duff and Kristin Scott Thomas both receive Supporting Actress nominations. The film's director Sam Taylor-Wood is nominated for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. Joining her in that category are: Eran Creevy, writer/director of Shifty; Stuart Hazeldine, writer/director of Exam; the directing and producing team of Mugabe and the White African (Lucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock and David Pearson); and Duncan Jones, director of Moon. Moon is also nominated for Outstanding British Film where it is joined by Fish Tank and In the Loop, which also has an Adapted Screenplay nomination.
Up has nominations for Animated Film, Original Screenplay, Music and Sound.
The Hangover and A Serious Man both receive nominations for Original Screenplay.
Nominated alongside Up for Animated Film are Coraline and Fantastic Mr Fox, which is also nominated for Music.
Broken Embraces, Let the Right One In, A Prophet and The White Ribbon are nominated in the Film Not in the English Language category alongside Coco Before Chanel.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus received nominations for Make Up & Hair and Production Design. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was nominated for Production Design and Special Visual Effects. Star Trek was nominated for Special Visual Effects and Sound.
The Road was nominated for Cinematography. Nine was nominated for Make Up & Hair, as was The Young Victoria, which also received a Costume Design nomination as did Bright Star and A Single Man.
The Short Animation nominations are The Happy Duckling, The Gruffalo, Mother of Many and the Short Film nominations are 14, I Do Air, Jade, Mixtape and Off Season. The Orange British Academy Film Awards will take place on Sunday 21 February at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.
