MUMBAI: Jason Reitman‘s Up In The Air emerged as the frontrunner with six nominations followed by Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Basterds, Rob Marshall‘s Nine and James Cameron‘s Avatar with four apiece when the nominations for the 67th Golden Globe awards were announced yesterday.

The Hurt Locker will vie for best drama with Up In The Air, Inglourious Basterds, Precious and Avatar.

Nine competes for the musical or comedy award against 500 Days Of Summer, The Hangover, It‘s Complicated and Julie & Julia.

Kathryn Bigelow got a best director nomination along with James Cameron for Avatar, Tarantino, Reitman and Clint Eastwood for Invictus. The first two have also been nominated for screenplay.

The dramatic actors category features heavyweight contenders Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, George Clooney for Up In The Air, Colin Firth for A Single Man and Morgan Freeman for Invictus, with Brothers‘ Tobey Maguire filling the fifth spot, possibly at the expense of The Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner.

Matt Damon was nominations twice, one for best comedy or musical actor for The Informant! and the other as supporting actor for Invictus with favourite Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds.

Two actresses - Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock have been nominated twice for acting awards. Streep dominates the musical or comedy category with It‘s Complicated and Julie & Julia, while Bullock rounds off her best ever year at the box-office with a musical or comedy nod for The Proposal and dramatic recognition for The Blind Side.

British stars overshadow the dramatic actress category with Helen Mirren for The Last Station, breakout Carey Mulligan for An Education and Emily Blunt for The Young Victoria all up against Bullock and Gabourey Sidibe for Precious.

Going by the studios, films from The Weinstein Company and Relativity Media drew 12 nominations apiece, followed by Universal and Paramount on seven.

The 67th Golden Globes ceremony is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles on 17 January.