The Oscars Get A Makeover

Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that they are going to expand the Best Picture Oscar category to 10 nominees, starting with the 2010 ceremony. This hearkens back to the olden days of the ceremony, which presented 10 or so nominees for 13 years, from '31 to '44.

Here's what Academy President Sid Ganis had to say about the change:

“Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize.”

Ten nominees? Really?!?

Do we really feel that there are that many good movies out there that are getting the shaft that we need to expand the field to include more? Ya know, there's a reason there's just five nominees: it's to keep EVERY movie from getting nominated. Those Best Picture nominees should be the best movies that year. You expand it out, and crap that really doesn't need to be in there sneaks in (although, based on last year's nominees, sometimes the crap sneaks in with just five).

What if 10 people nominate Transformers 2 as a joke (because I'm sure there are probably some jackasses like myself in the Academy who would conceive of such a prank), and 10 votes just happens to be the tie-breaker for 10th place? So, now we have Transformers 2 as a Best Picture nominee? When you've just got five nominees, you have to carefully pick who you want to nominate, because you've only got five. But, once you get it out to 10, you kinda start picking movies out of a hat. I know I'm hard-pressed to name 10 great movies every year; I'm sure there are Academy voters who have similar challenges.

And you know what I blame for this expansion of the field? The success of The Dark Knight.

A lot of people thought that The Dark Knight got the shaft when it didn't get nominated for Best Picture last year. It was the highest grossing movie of the year (2nd of all time) and was resoundingly loved by everyone (though hated by me). Maybe The Dark Knight was in everyone's top 10, but not top five. But, when you expand the field to 10, maybe The Dark Knight makes the cut. And seeing as a lot of Academy members haven't actually seen all the nominated movies, it's no surprise that the Best Picture winner tends to be a blockbuster or has a lot of buzz. The Dark Knight had both, so, maybe, in this "what if" scenario, it wins Best Picture. And I'm more pissed off than when Slumdog Millionaire won. So, let's bump that number up and get even more undeserving shit in there. Hell, if blockbuster piece of garbage like Titanic can win, why NOT The Dark Knight?

But maybe it's not such a bad thing. Using last year as an example again, if you had 10 nominees, we probably wouldn't have ended up with the same batch of losers. Maybe The Wrestler (which really did get shafted) makes it in. Maybe even Gran Turismo. Revolutionary Road, Doubt, and Synecdoche, New York, all great films that missed the cut. Maybe if you put enough good films in there, it keeps Academy members from voting for something that doesn't deserve it because, well, what else were they going to vote for? I guess we'll have to see how it pans out in January.

That is, if they actually release any movies worth nominating by then. Half-way through the year, and I haven't seen one I'd vote for.