JAMES Cameron (Avatar) and ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) have both been nominated for best film and best director in this years Baftas. This years film Baftas have been deliciously spiced with the ex factor following the announcement of nominations that pit former husband and wife James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow against each other. Avatar and The Hurt Locker each garnered eight nominations - and in six categories (best film, director, cinematography, editing, sound and visual effects) they are competing directly. Cameron, 55, and Bigelow, 58, were married in 1989 and divorced two years later; she was the third of his five wives to date. They had worked together on 1991s Point Break (she directed, he produced) and collaborated after they split on Strange Days (1995), with her directing his script. They have remained friends, too, through Cam-erons subsequent marriages, the next of which was to Linda Hamilton, the feisty star of his Terminator blockbusters. Cameron clearly has a taste for strong women in his movies as much as in real life. His monumental Oscar-magnet Titanic (1997) featured a powerful performance from Kate Winslet, and, just as memorably, his 1986 Aliens starred Sigourney Weaver as the ever-resourceful space-cruiser Ripley, who takes on the slime-ball ETs with murderous relish. TG Two decades on, Weaver is the biggest star name in Avatar and reprises something of Ripleys resilience as the tough, chain-smoking scientist Grace Augustine. However, Camerons film is not about stars or performances: of all the many nominations it has gained so far this awards season, only one - and a very minor one - has gone to a member of the cast (Zoe Saldana, shortlisted for best supporting actress in the Black Reel awards). No, Avatar is all about spectacle. It is gorgeous, visually stunning, an innovative technical triumph that redefines the experience of movie-watching. The forests of the far distant moon Pandora, where the story is set, have been realised with mind-blowing, jaw-dropping ingenuity and imagination - just drink in the fabulous creatures, the thousand-foot trees, the skyscapes filled with floating mountains. Although there is an inter-species love story threaded through the narrative about an invading force exploiting an under-developed culture for its mineral resources, Avatar is not primarily concerned with its characters, whether they are human, alien or something in between. It is all about the wow factor. Bigelows film, on the other hand, focuses with an almost unbearable intensity on the lives - and deaths - of US Army bomb-disposal specialists. The men who voluntarily pick up booby-trapped explosive devices - what, asks Bigelow, makes them tick? And it is significant that, unlike Avatar, The Hurt Locker is up for an acting Bafta - for Jeremy Renners fierce and utterly gripping performance as a maverick operator who embraces danger with an irresponsible relish that sometimes threatens even his own buddies. Nevertheless, for all its psychological insights and emotional sensitivity, The Hurt Locker is also a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat war movie peppered with heart-stopping moments of terror. Bigelow, who has a well-deserved reputation for making edgy, often blokey movies, does not stint on high-adrenalin set pieces. The Hurt Locker, released last summer, had only just covered its production costs of an estimated $11 million by the end of the year. Avatar, in contrast, was released only a month ago, yet has already taken more than $500 million at the box office. It is likely to very soon topple Titanic as the most successful film ever. But which is the better movie? Cameron has been magnanimous towards his ex-wife as the plaudits have piled up. When she was nominated in the Golden Globes (which Cameron ultimately won last weekend), he said he couldnt be happier. Its a recognition thats long overdue, he said. Ive known that shes a genius filmmaker for a long time, and shes always flirted with this sort of critical success. The irony, of course, is that the biggest obstacle to victory for Bigelow at the Baftas and, subsequently, the Oscars is the presence of a certain film about 9ft blue aliens scampering around the most magical forest ever seen on the big screen. TG