It could be a reality TV show: A divorced couple compete for prizes before an audience of millions.

And that, in fact, is what's going to happen with James Cameron's Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker each receiving nine nominations yesterday - including best picture and director - for the 82d Academy Awards.

It's the battle of the exes. Bigelow, the former Mrs. Cameron, is only the fourth woman to be honored with a directing nomination by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Last weekend she won the Directors Guild prize, edging out her onetime spouse and anointing her the favorite to take home the Oscar.

Avatar, the trippy, other-world 3-D behemoth, and The Hurt Locker, an intense Iraq war nail-biter, lead an expanded field of 10 best-picture titles this year - up from five, and the first time the Academy named so many since 1943.

The move to broaden the range of nominees came after a slew of grim little indies (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood) dominated in recent years, and acclaimed blockbusters like The Dark Knight failed to make the cut.

And sure enough, the other best-picture entries represent a nice mix of prestige fare and popcorn fun. The mightily embraced Sandra Bullock weepie The Blind Side and the South African sci-fi sleeper District 9 symbolize the new Oscar populism. The English coming-of-ager An Education is top-notch British art-house fare. Quentin Tarantino's bloody World War II fantasy Inglourious Basterds is, well, a goose-stepping, cigar-chompin' comic book of a movie. There's the hard-but-heartening Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, directed by Philadelphian Lee Daniels (and endorsed by Oprah Winfrey), while the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man and Jason Reitman's Great Recession comedy Up in the Air mix calamity and laughter in equal doses.

Pixar's Up, the animated yarn about a septuagenarian widower's balloon flight to the Amazon, is only the second animated feature to gain a best-picture nomination. (Disney's Beauty and the Beast, in 1991, was the first.) Up was also named in the best-animated-feature category.

The question remains: With Bigelow, Cameron, Daniels, Reitman, and Tarantino receiving director nods (Daniels is only the second African American to be so honored), are the five pictures whose directors were not nominated relegated to second-tier status? And will the inclusion of several mega-hit crowd-pleasers have an impact when the 5,777 voting members of the Academy check their ballots?

In the best-actor slot, Jeff Bridges won his fifth nomination - and, with it, front-runner status - for his portrayal of an alcoholic country crooner in Crazy Heart. George Clooney received his third acting nomination, as a corporate downsizer in Up in the Air; Briton Colin Firth was honored for his performance as a mournful gay college professor in A Single Man; Morgan Freeman for his ace portrayal of Nelson Mandela in Invictus; and Jeremy Renner for his unnerving work as a maverick bomb-squad sergeant in The Hurt Locker.

Among women, Meryl Streep received her 16th acting nomination, an Academy record, for her canny channeling of foodie goddess Julia Child in Julie & Julia, while Sandra Bullock nabbed her first, as the woman who adopts a homeless teen with amazing football skills in The Blind Side. (Ironically, on Monday Bullock was accorded a nomination for a Razzie, the Golden Raspberry Award for worst performance of the year, in another of her 2009 outings, All About Steve.)

Joining Streep and Bullock, the odds-on rivals, are Helen Mirren, for her portryal of Leo Tolstoy's wife in The Last Station; the quietly luminous Carey Mulligan, star of An Education; and charismatic Gabourey Sidibe, as the obese, illiterate, pregnant high schooler of Precious. Not only is this Sidibe's first nomination, it's the 26-year-old's first movie.

In the animated-feature field, in addition to Pixar's CG entry Up, the nominees include the stop-motion pieces Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox, Disney's hand-drawn The Princess and the Frog, and the little-seen Irish title The Secret of Kells. This is only the second time since the inception of the animated-feature category in 2001 that the slot has boasted five nominees - proof that 2009 was an especially good year for 'toons (and technologies) of all stripes.

After a month or so of guild awards, critics' citations, People's Choices, and Golden Globes, there weren't many surprises or snubs to emerge from the Oscar list. Maggie Gyllenhaal's presence in the supporting-actress ranks, for her bittersweet turn as a single mom tumbling ill-advisedly into a relationship with Bridges' country singer in Crazy Heart, was probably the biggest head-turner. But Mo'Nique, scarily good as the abusive mother in Precious, has already nabbed a Golden Globe and has a veritable lock on the Oscar, so no matter. Penelope Cruz (Nine) and Up in the Air costars Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick round out the category.

And the German actor Christoph Waltz, playing a jaunty SS officer out to get the Jews in Inglourious Basterds, is the consensus fave in the supporting-actor field - a gang that includes Matt Damon (a South African rugby player in Invictus), Woody Harrelson (an Army officer bearing bad news in The Messenger), Christopher Plummer (Tolstoy in The Last Station), and Stanley Tucci (a serial rapist/killer in The Lovely Bones).

The inclusion of Up in both the best-feature and best-animated-feature groups has the potential to Up-end things, so to speak. If Avatar and The Hurt Locker split the Academy - Team Cameron or Team Bigelow? - the much-loved animated feature could squeak by to steal best picture. Then again, it'll probably just win the animated-feature trophy, remaining in the prestigious cartooning ghetto where WALL-E, Ratatouille, and Wallace & Gromit reside.

The 82d annual Academy Awards will be televised live on 6ABC on March 7, beginning at 8 p.m. The red carpet, of course, rolls out hours earlier.

Academy Award Nominations

A partial list of 82d annual Academy Award nominations:

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.

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.