Blog & full list: Oscars nominations revealed

ENGLISH stars Colin Firth, Helen Mirren and Carey Mulligan have been nominated for best actor and best actress Oscars.

Firth is up for his first Oscar for his role as a gay academic mourning the death of his partner in fashion designer Tom Ford's debut feature film A Single Man.

Newcomer Carey Mulligan, 24, is up for best actress for her role in An Education, based on the memoirs of journalist Lynn Barber.

Previous Academy Award winner Dame Helen gets a go at a second Oscar for her performance as writer Leo Tolstoy's wife in The Last Station.

An Education is nominated for best picture, alongside films including Avatar, The Hurt Locker, District 9, Precious, and Up In The Air.

Avatar director James Cameron is pitted against his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, whose film The Hurt Locker has won critical acclaim, in the directing category.

Made for a fraction of the budget of Avatar, The Hurt Locker, a tense movie about an elite bomb disposal team, has won widespread critical acclaim and triumphed at the Directors Guild of America awards.

Cameron and Bigelow were both shortlisted for best director in the Golden Globes, with Cameron taking the prize.

Avatar and The Hurt Locker are leading the nominations with nine apiece.

Avatar recently surpassed Cameron's multiple Oscar-winning Titanic - and saw the director beat his own record when the film became the highest grossing movie yet.

The English hopefuls for lead actress compete with Golden Globe winner Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side, who is being tipped as favourite to land the Oscar.

Meryl Streep is also nominated for her performance in Julie and Julia and Gabourey Sidibe gets a nod for Precious, the film in which she made her acting debut.

Firth is up against Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), George Clooney (Up in the Air), Morgan Freeman (Invictus) and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker).

Matt Damon (Invictus), Woody Harrelson (The Messenger), Christopher Plummer (The Last Station), Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones) and Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) are up for best supporting actor.

Penelope Cruz (Nine), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart), Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air) and Mo'Nique (Precious) are the contenders for supporting actress.

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The full list of Oscar nominations:-

Best picture

Avatar (James Cameron - director; Brooke Breton , Laeta Kalogridis, Jon Landau, Josh McLaglen, Janace Tashjian, Peter M Tobyansen, Colin Wilson - producers)

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp - director, Bill Block, Philippa Boyens, Carolynne Cunningham, Elliot Ferwerda, Paul Hanson, Peter Jackson, Ken Kamins, Michael S Murphey - producers)

An Education (Lone Scherfig)

The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

Precious (Lee Daniels)

A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)

Up in the Air (Jason Reitman)

The Blind Side (John Lee Hancock)

Up (Pete Docter)

Directing

Avatar (James Cameron)

The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)

Lee Daniels (Precious)

Actor in a leading role

Morgan Freeman in Invictus

Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart

George Clooney in Up in the Air

Colin Firth in A Single Man

Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker

Actress in a leading role

Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia

Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side

Helen Mirren in The Last Station

Gabourey Sidibe in Precious

Carey Mulligan in An Education

Actor in a supporting role

Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds

Christopher Plummer in The Last Station

Matt Damon in Invictus

Stanley Tucci in The Lovely Bones

Woody Harrelson in The Messenger

Actress in a supporting role

Mo'Nique in Precious

Vera Farmiga in Up in the Air

Pen�lope Cruz in Nine

Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air

Maggie Gyllenhaal in Crazy Heart

Animated feature film

Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson)

The Princess and the Frog (Ron Clements and John Musker)

Coraline (Henry Selick)

Fantastic Mr Fox (Wes Anderson)

The Secret of Kells (Tomm Moore)

Foreign language film

Ajami (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani, Israel)

A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, France)

The Secret of Her Eyes (Juan Jose Campanella, Argentina)

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, Germany)

The Milk of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa, Peru)

Writing (adapted screenplay)

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell)

An Education (Nick Hornby)

Precious (Geoffrey Fletcher)

Up in the Air (Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner)

In the Loop (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Ian Martin and Tony Roche)

Writing (original screenplay)

The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)

Up (Pete Docter and Bob Petersen)

The Messenger (Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman)

Art direction

Avatar

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (art direction: Dan Hermansen and Denis Schnegg; set decoration: Caroline Smith and Shane Vieau)

Nine (art direction: Peter Findley, Phil Harvey, Simon Lamont; set decoration: Gordon Sim)

Sherlock Holmes (art direction: James Foster, Nick Gottschalk, Matthew Gray, Niall Moroney; set decoration: Katie Spencer)

The Young Victoria

Cinematography

Avatar (Mauro Fiore)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The Hurt Locker (Barry Ackroyd)

Inglourious Basterds (Robert Richardson)

The White Ribbon (Christian Berger)

Costume design

Bright Star

Coco Before Chanel (Catherine Leterrier)

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Monique Prudhomme)

Nine (Colleen Atwood)

The Young Victoria (Sandy Powell)

Documentary (feature)

Burma VJ

The Cove (Louie Psihoyos)

Food, Inc (Robert Kenner)

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith)

Which Way Home?

Documentary (short subject)

China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province

The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner

The Last Track: Closing of a GM Plant

Music by Prudence

Rabbit a la Berlin

Film editing

Avatar

District 9

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Precious

Makeup

Il Divo

The Young Victoria

Star Trek

Music (original score)

Avatar (James Horner)

Fantastic Mr Fox (Alexandre Desplat)

Up (Michael Giacchino)

The Hurt Locker (Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders)

Sherlock Holmes (Hans Zimmer)

Music (original song)

Almost There, from The Princess and the Frog by Randy Newman

Down in New Orleans, from The Princess and the Frog by Randy Newman

Loin de Paname, from Paris 36

Take it All, from Nine by Maury Yeston

The Weary Kind, from Crazy Heart by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Short film (animated)

French Roast

Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty

Logoramam

The Lady and the Reaper

A Matter of Loaf and Death

Short film (live action)

The Door

Instead of Abracadabra

Kavi

Miracle Fish

The New Tenants

Sound editing

Avatar

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Star Trek

Up

Sound mixing

Avatar

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Star Trek

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Visual effects

Avatar

District 9

Star Trek