Avatar, Hurt Locker lead

SCIENCE-FICTION epic Avatar and gritty Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker will battle for supremacy at the Oscars after topping the nominations with nine nods each on Tuesday.

James Cameron's Avatar - the most expensive movie ever made and the highest grossing film of all time - picked up a slew of nominations including best picture and best director. The low budget The Hurt Locker earned nine nominations including a nod for director Kathryn Bigelow - Cameron's ex-wife - as well as best picture, best actor and best original screenplay.

Bigelow is only the fourth woman ever to be nominated for directing and the first since Sofia Coppola received a nod for Lost in Translation in 2003. No woman director has ever won the Oscars top prize. However The Hurt Locker, a tense thriller about a US army bomb disposal squad operating in Iraq, has emerged as the favorite to land the Oscars top best picture prize when the 82nd Academy Awards are presented on Mar 7.

This year's best picture race was expanded to 10 films by the Academy in a move analysts have said was intended to boost television ratings for the awards show.

Vying for the best picture race alongside Avatar and The Hurt Locker are Quentin Tarantino's bloody World War II revenge film Inglourious Basterds, which weighed in with eight nominations. It was followed by the independent Precious, about the struggles of an illiterate abused teenager, which scored six nominations, including best picture and best director.

Other films in the best picture race include District 9, South African director Neill Blomkamp's dazzling science-fiction film about aliens stranded in a Johannesburg township, and Up, Pixar's charming animated film about a crotchety widower who ties balloons to his house and floats to South America. It is the only second time in Oscars history that an animated film has made it into the best picture race following Disney's Beauty and the Beast in 1992.