Few surprises, but plenty of drama

Films with Most Nominations

1	Avatar	9 noms
1	The Hurt Locker	9 noms
3	Inglourious Basterds	8 noms
4	Precious	6 noms
4	Up in the Air	6 noms

Earlier this morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 82nd Academy Awards.

This year's nominations are most notable for the fact that the Best Picture category includes 10 nominees (instead of five) for the first time in over 60 years. While that expansion was originally expected to lead to some unconventional selections in the category, most Oscar experts managed to successfully predict nine of the nominees.

Also as expected, Avatar and The Hurt Locker led all films with nine nominations apiece, setting up a head-to-head showdown between the year's highest-grossing film and the year's best-reviewed title in a number of categories.

Listed below are this year's nominees in every category.

And the nominees are...

There was just one surprise out of the ten nominees: the spot that went to the uplifting sports drama The Blind Side was mostly expected to belong to the uplifting sports drama Invictus. (Blind SIde performed much better at the box office, so in that respect, the choice was not wholly unexpected.) The selection of District 9 would have seemed unbelievable at this time last year -- not only because it is a science-fiction film, but because of its non-Hollywood origins -- but the experts correctly anticipated its inclusion. Other titles likely benefiting from the expansion of the list to 10 titles include Pixar's Up (which was also nominated in the animated feature category), the Coen Brothers' little-seen A Serious Man, and the well-received British drama An Education. One film that was mentioned as a strong possibility for a nomination but was left of the list was JJ Abrams' Star Trek, although that box office hit did receive a handful of technical nominations.

Absolutely no surprises here; the five directors listed above had been considered a lock to get the nominations for weeks. And it is shaping up to be a dramatic two-person contest between Kathryn Bigelow and her ex-husband, James Cameron. Bigelow is just the fourth female ever to receive a directing nod, while Lee Daniels is only the second African American director to be nominated.

The writing nominations went mostly as expected, with a few surprises. The selection of The Messenger for best original screenplay was not anticipated; many pundits felt that (500) Days of Summer would earn a nomination here. In the adapted screenplay category, the nomination of British political satire In The Loop was a major surprise, with many experts expecting Tom Ford to earn a nomination for A Single Man instead.

The acting nominees were also predicted well in advance by most experts, with two exceptions. In the supporting actress category, the selections of Maggie Gyllenhaal and, to a lesser extent, Penelope Cruz were relatively unexpected. Nominated actors ranged from first-timers like Stanley Tucci to Meryl Streep, whose nomination is her 16th.

By far the biggest surprise out of all the films mentioned above: The Secret of Kells (an Irish adventure yet to be released in the U.S.), nominated for best animated feature in lieu of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs or Ponyo.

The original score category featured a number of surprising nominees. While veteran composer Marvin Hamlisch was widely expected to receive a nod for his score to The Informant!, and the scores to Star Trek and A Serious Man were also mentioned as potential nominees, those spots instead went to Hans Zimmer's Sherlock Holmes score, and -- more surprisingly -- the scores to Hurt Locker and Mr. Fox. In the song category, the major omission is Avatar's "I See You," while Nine was expected to receive more than one nomination (instead, the animated The Princess and the Frog -- composed by Academy favorite Randy Newman -- pulled off that feat). The appearance of Paris 36 is also surprising; the French period drama was little-seen and poorly-reviewed.

More coverage to come

In the next few days, we'll take a closer look at the nominated films and compare them to past years' winners. We'll also see how accurately the experts -- and Metacritic users -- predicted the nominations. Finally, we'll see what factors serve as good predictors of the eventual Oscar winners, and we'll also invite you to predict the winners and match wits with the experts. And then, next month, the big night arrives: the 81st Annual Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, will air live on ABC on Sunday, March 7th at 8:00p (5:00p PT).