Much like the judge in their divorce proceedings, the motion picture academy may be forced to divide assets to settle the Oscar battle between former spouses James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, whose movies lead the field with nine nominations apiece.
LOU’S OSCAR PICKS, CATEGORY BY CATEGORY
If this happens — and I think it will — Cameron will get custody of his second Best Picture Oscar (after “Titanic”) for the phenomenally popular, groundbreaking sci-fi adventure “Avatar.”
And Bigelow — who already has a super-predictive Directors Guild of American award on her mantelpiece — will likely become the first woman to capture a Best Director Oscar for the gritty Iraq war thriller “The Hurt Locker,” thus allowing the academy to make history.
That’s unless Quentin Tarantino and his World War II fantasy “Inglourious Basterds” — which scored eight nods yesterday and took the top prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards — pulls off one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history.
In the race for Best Actress, 45-year-old Oscar newcomer Sandra Bullock (also a Razzie nominee for “All About Steve”) is looking like a prohibitive favorite over 16-time nominee Meryl Streep (“Julie & Julia”) after Bullock’s smash-hit sports drama “The Blind Side” also scored a Best Picture nomination.
Jeff Bridges — like Bullock, a surprise SAG winner — is also heavily favored as a country-music star in “Crazy Heart,” but I wouldn’t rule out an upset by George Clooney, who does the best work of his career as a corporate terminator “Up in the Air.”
In the snoozy supporting races, there is no reason to believe that Mo’Nique (“Precious”) and Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) won’t continue their awards season sweep for their showy roles as villains.
They’re among an unusually large contingent of first-time acting nominees, along with Bullock, Gabourey Sidibe (“Precious”), Carey Mulligan (“An Education”), Colin Firth (“A Single Man”), Jeremy Renner (“The Hurt Locker”) and Stanley Tucci (“The Lovely Bones”).
Yesterday was the first time since 1944 (when “Casablanca” triumphed over a field of 1943 releases) that 10 movies were nominated for Best Picture, instead of the customary five — though with the Best Director field still limited to five, half the Best Picture nominees are instant noncontenders.
Many predicted that the expanded field would be filled with mediocrity — but this didn’t happen.
The academy’s membership delivered an adventurous list that deftly mixes populist fare like the sci-fi allegory
“District 9” with art-house favorites, such as Joel and Ethan Coen’s dark comedy “A Serious Man,” both of which were mild surprises (Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-baiting “Invictus,” which like “District 9” is set in South Africa, ironically failed to make the cut.)
The biggest shock yesterday came in the Best Animated Feature category, where “Up” is expected to easily triumph, even as Pixar’s masterpiece became only the second ’toon in academy history (after “Beauty and the Beast”) to score a Best Picture nomination. Snubbing expensive studio fare like DreamWorks’ “Monsters vs. Aliens” and Sony’s “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” the animation branch instead gave a nod to “The Secret of Kells,” an obscure Irish-Belgian-French co-production that is scheduled to open in the United States this spring.
More at nypost.com/blogs/movies