Exactly a month before its awards ceremony, The British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominations have been released. Another of the many possible indicators of what will be on Oscar ballots, the BAFTAs are always fun to peruse since they tend to include a couple of surprises and films that aren’t on the same calendar cycle as North America.

You can find the full list of their nominees on their site, but here’s a list of the “major” ones:

BEST FILM
Avatar
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Precious
Up In The Air

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
An Education
Fish Tank
In The Loop
Moon
Nowhere Boy

DIRECTOR
Avatar – James Cameron
District 9 – Neill Blomkamp
An Education – Lone Scherfig
The Hurt Locker – Kathryn Bigelow
Inglourious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The Hangover – Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
The Hurt Locker – Mark Boal
Inglorious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino
A Serious Man – Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Up – Bob Peterson, Pete Docter

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
District 9 – Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
An Education – Nick Hornby
In the Loop – Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
Precious – Geoffrey Fletcher
Up in the Air – Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Broken Embraces
Coco Before Chanel
Let the Right One In
A Prophet
The White Ribbon

ANIMATED FILM
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Up

LEADING ACTOR
Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
George Clooney – Up in the Air
Colin Firth – A Single Man
Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker
Andy Serkis – Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

LEADING ACTRESS
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Saoirse Ronan – The Lovely Bones
Gabourey Sidibe – Precious
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia
Audrey Tautou – Coco Before Chanel

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Alec Baldwin – It’s Complicated
Christian McKay – Me and Orson Welles
Alfred Molina – An Education
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Anne-Marie Duff – Nowhere Boy
Vera Farmiga – Up in the Air
Anna Kendrick – Up in the Air
Mo’Nique – Precious
Kristin Scott Thomas – Nowhere Boy

ORANGE RISING STAR AWARD
Jesse Eisenberg
Nicholas Hoult
Carey Mulligan
Tahar Rahim
Kristen Stewart

That last category is an interesting one…One has to wonder if voters might note Carey Mulligan’s presence there and feel better about skipping over her for Best Actress.

Also, I’m personally still baffled by nominations for The Hangover – a Screenplay nod from the Golden Globes and now BAFTA? Just weird. Does my heart good to see Vera Farmiga and Let The Right One In get nominated though. And I think this really shows that the Foreign Language film (ie. non-English) is pretty much between The White Ribbon and A Prophet at this stage.

Surprises? I probably wouldn’t have guessed Alec Baldwin or Audrey Tatou (though I haven’t seen either of their films) in their acting categories and I’m unfamiliar with both Nowhere Boy and Andy Serkis’ film.