The conductor of the Academy Awards orchestra has been given his instructions: As soon as you hear the words "I'd like to thank the Academy," cue the exit music.

Perhaps his directive isn't quite that severe, but with the expanded best-picture field this year — it has doubled from five to 10 nominees — the producers of the Academy's annual awards telecast are going to have to squeeze out a few extra minutes somewhere in order to wrap up their notoriously long-winded red-carpet gala in something close to three hours. (If watching the local late-night news on ABC is part of your evening routine, be prepared to wait.)

And the Oscar goes to ...

Maybe instead of giving each film its own video montage, co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin could do a snappy little "Dueling Banjos"-type skit highlighting the finer points of each film. Martin would certainly go for it.

Exactly what kind of shtick those two have cooked up for tonight's ceremony is anyone's guess, but at some point they're bound to crack wise about the institution of divorce.

While the field of best-picture contenders might look big, it's really just a two-horse race between "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker," and the jockeys sitting atop those films are, respectively, writer-directors James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, who happen to have been married for a couple years before splitting in 1991. Both are leading contenders for best director as well.

Those hoping for a claws-drawn knock-down, drag-out between the former spouses will be sorely disappointed. Not only do they appear to harbor no ill will, but they continue to collaborate professionally. (Still, let's see how well their mutual admiration holds up once the statues have been handed out and the after-party champagne starts loosening tongues.)

Before making the case for Cameron's "Avatar" or Bigelow's "Hurt Locker," the other eight nominees merit some attention.

None of the films is flat-out undeserving, but "The Blind Side," "District 9" and "A Serious Man" would have been shut out of a five-film field.

"The Blind Side," a feel-good sports drama with a production budget of less than $30 million that ended up grossing a quarter of a billion dollars based on word-of-mouth reviews, is the kind of film moms go to see — twice — if only to ogle Tim McGraw, who bears up remarkably well as Sean Tuohy, the real-life adoptive father of homeless teen turned NFL offensive lineman Michael Oher. For her turn as Oher's sassy mother, Leigh Anne Tuohy, Sandra Bullock received her first (and probably only-ever) Oscar nomination for best actress. Vegas likes Bullock's odds, but don't be surprised if the Academy favors a slightly more dramatic performance. (Go, Carey Mulligan!)

In the sci-fi thriller "District 9," a race of aliens becomes stranded on Earth in, of all places, apartheid-era South Africa. A talented no-name cast deserved heaps of cred for selling "District 9" as a cutting social commentary on the injustice of segregation and the ugliness of bigotry, but fine as it is, this is no best picture.

"A Serious Man," while a superior film, plays like a private joke between filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. The perennial Oscar faves offer up an inside-baseball look at growing up Jewish in middle-class America — which they did — but the only reason the Academy jumped at the Coens' offering this time around is because it had slots to fill.

Of the remaining films, "Precious" and "Up" look like serious contenders.

Forget for a moment that "Precious" stars foul-mouthed comedienne and one-time UPN-sitcom regular Mo'Nique, whose feature-film credits include roles in such cinematic gems as "Soul Plane," "Beerfest" and "Phat Girlz." (Yes, they're hard to forget, but try.) Forget the film stars sugar-pop diva Mariah Carey, whose most memorable big-screen endeavor was the thinly veiled autobiopic and epic bomb "Glitter." Forget everything these two women have done in their careers to date because their performances in director Lee Daniels' portrait of an overweight, illiterate, abused Harlem teen will leave you breathless.

Mo'Nique, nominated for best supporting actress for her portrayal of a bitter, ignorant welfare mother, is the only lock at this year's Oscars. What she does here defies description; see the movie.

Co-star Gabourey Sidibe earned a best-actress nod as the besieged teen Precious and single-handedly elevated what could have been just another inner-city-youth-perseveres melodrama to the level of high art.

As for Mariah Carey, well, you won't believe it's the same woman who last month got all sloppy drunk at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, where she accepted an award for her breakthrough performance as a social worker. What Carey does in "Precious" is miraculous, if only for the fact that she's the one doing it.

Disney/Pixar's "Up," the best all-around domestic film of 2009, deserves more recognition than the Oscar it will surely win for best animated feature. This tender story about the budding relationship between a crotchety old loner and an earnest, unwittingly forlorn Boy Scout delves deeper into the emotional lives of its characters than any Pixar offering to date.

Of the nominated films, "Up" is the one most likely to please everyone. The British Film Institute's Sight and Sound magazine, the critical gold standard for international cinema, ranked "Up" among its top 10 film of 2009, an honor bestowed on only three of the Academy's best-picture nominees — the others being "Hurt Locker" and "Inglorious Basterds."

That last film, writer-director Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds," certainly has the sheen of a best-picture nominee, but there's something inherently distasteful about a movie that rewrites the outcome of World War II. While it's easy to appreciate this reimagining of the last days of the Third Reich as a slick attempt at dark comedy, it also plays like an exercise in hubris by a brash filmmaker.

Let's see ... that leaves "Up in the Air," about a disconnected corporate ax man (George Clooney), and "An Education," about an intelligent, love-blind teenager (the afore-cheered Mulligan). These are two very good films with very good story lines and very good casts, and if Oscars were meant for very good films, they might stand a chance. But when the Academy shoots for the stars, it shoots for four stars, not three and a half.

Which is not to say each of the front-runners in this race is without fault. The computer-generated wonders of "Avatar" — the box-office juggernaut that stages in spectacular sci-fi fashion an interplanetary showdown between the power machine of capitalism and the sacred organism Nature — cannot mask stretches of corny, canned dialogue.

"Hurt Locker," too, has its critics. Some members of the military believe the film takes undue liberties with the facts about life as a soldier in Iraq. In response, Kathryn Bigelow's camp maintains that the wartime thriller wasn't meant to be an accounting of the war in Iraq, but a psychological portrait of a war addict who disarms bombs for a living (played by relative unknown and best-actor nominee Jeremy Renner). In this capacity, the film more than succeeds.

Grounded in a devastating, stark realism, "Hurt Locker" should win best picture, and Bigelow should win best director. Whether the members of the Academy have the artistic fortitude to snub an international sensation in "Avatar" is anybody's guess, but it's the right thing to do.

Let James Cameron be content with his box-office billions.

The 82nd annual Academy Awards airs at 8:30 tonight on ABC.