MTV MOVIE AWARDS NOMINEES ANNOUNCED

The films Twilight and Slumdog Millionaire lead the nominees for the 2009 MTV Movie Awards to be held at the end of the month.

For the first time ever, the nominees were selected by the public through voting on MTV’s website. The nominees were announced on Monday.

Twilight has seven nominations, including nods for Best Movie, Best Female Performance (Kristen Stewart) and Breakthrough Performance Male (Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner).

The Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire garnered six nominations, including Best Movie, Breakthrough Performance Female (Freida Pinto) and Breakthrough Performance Male (Dev Patel).

Joining Twilight and Slumdog in the Best Movie category are The Dark Knight, High School Musical 3: Senior Year and Iron Man.

In addition to the Twilight and Slumdog boys, the Breakthrough Performance Male category consists of Ben Barnes (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) and Bobb’e J. Thompson (Role Models). Other Breakthrough Performance Female selections are Ashley Tisdale (HSM 3), Vanessa Hudgens (HSM 3) and Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana: The Movie).

Other Best Female Performance nominees include Anne Hathaway (Bride Wars), Angelina Jolie (Wanted) and Kate Winslet (The Reader), while other Best Male Performance nods went to Zac Efron (HSM3), Shia LaBeouf (Eagle Eye) and Robert Downey, Jr. (Tropic Thunder).

MTV will also introduce two brand-new categories at this year’s show. Best Song From a Movie nominees include tracks from Hannah Montana (Cyrus) and The Wrestler (Bruce Springsteen). “Best WTF Moment” selections honour such outrageous scenes as Ben Stiller tasting a decapitated head (Tropic Thunder) and Amy Poehler peeing in a sink (Baby Mama).

Battling it out for Best Fight will be folks like Christian Bale and Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) and Seth Rogen, James Franco and Danny McBride (Pineapple Express).

The Best Kiss category will see another showdown between Twilight (Stewart and Pattinson) and Slumdog (Pinto and Patel), with other lip-locking nominees including Franco and Sean Penn (Milk), and Paul Rudd and Thomas Lennon (I Love You, Man).

Saturday Night Live funnyman Andy Samberg will host the 18th annual MTV Movie Awards on May 31 from the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California. Movie fans can vote for the winners in all the categories at the MTV Movies Awards site.