Movies Features

Can Avatar rejuvenate tired Oscars?

Feb 3, 2010, 10:28 GMT

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak (R) and Anne Hathaway (L) announce the nominations for \'Best Director\' at the 82nd Academy Awards nominations announcement press conference. EPA/ANDREW GOMBERT

Los Angeles - Avatar has crushed Titanic's box-office record, but with 'only' nine Oscar nominations on Monday it can't touch Titanic's 11 Academy Awards.

Plenty of drama remains for the Oscar ceremony, which will be seen around the world on March 7.

Most intriguing is the clash between James Cameron, the director of both Avatar and Titanic, and his ex-wife Katherine Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker, which also has nine nominations.

The smart money in Hollywood is already betting on Bigelow to triumph in the epic battle between Avatar, the most expensive movie ever made, and the gritty, low-budget drama about a US bomb squad in Iraq who get a reckless new leader just weeks before the end of their tour of duty.

'We have a classic David and Goliath matchup between the biggest movie in history and a film that ... had no stars and is about Iraq, which is a cursed subject at the Oscars,' Oscar guru Tom O'Neil said on his website, Theenvelope.com.

Hollywood screenwriters could not have come up with a better plot to promote interest in the Oscars, which have suffered declining ratings since 1998 as they focused on artsy and usually depressing films with little popular following.

The fate of box office favourite Avatar is not the only question driving Oscar interest this year.

The decision to expand the number of best-picture nominees from five to 10 may also widen the appeal of the star-studded telecast, though many believe that the Oscar producers got it wrong by inviting ageing actors Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin to host the evening rather than someone with a little more youth appeal.

Critics agreed that there were few surprises in the acting nominations.

O'Neil and others even had the rare success of predicting all the 20 acting nominees correctly, even though they included a dozen first-timers.

Jeff Bridges is the hot favourite for the lead-actor prize, in which he will compete with George Clooney (Up in the Air), Colin Firth (A Single Man), Morgan Freeman (Invictus) and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker), none of which struck box-office gold.

Sandra Bullock is the favourite for the lead actress prize for her role in the hit The Blind Side. It will be a huge surprise if she fails to win despite competition from past winners Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren, not to mention newcomers Carey Mulligan and Gabourey Sidibe.

Critic Michael Medved says that producers are expecting a spectacular bump in audience ratings for the March 7 broadcast, maybe even doubling the all-time low of 31.8 million US viewers from 2008.

'The Oscar telecast will get a huge boost from all the avid Avatar fanatics,' Medved said. 'Popular favorite Sandra Bullock ... will draw additional viewers who made the heartwarming, faith-family-and- football saga The Blind Side one of last year's most successful surprises.'