Academy Awards 2010

Tonight is the 2010 Academy Awards. The top films of the year will receive the Oscar awards as will the actors and actresses that star in them.

The two favorites in the expanded field of 10 best-picture nominees are the as-big-as-it-gets blockbuster “Avatar” and the critical darling “The Hurt Locker,” which drew a tiny fraction of the audience its mammoth competitor pulled in.

Either movie would represent a first at the Oscars. James Cameron’s “Avatar” would be the only science-fiction film ever to take home the best-picture prize. While war films have done well at the Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” would be the first winner centered on the war on terror, a subject that has stirred little interest among movie audiences shell-shocked by news coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The other eight films competing for best picture: the football drama “The Blind Side,” the sci-fi thriller “District 9,” the British teen tale “An Education,” the World War II saga “Inglourious Basterds,” the Harlem story “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” the Jewish domestic chronicle “A Serious Man,” the animated adventure “Up,” and the recession-era yarn “Up in the Air.”