Academy Expands Best Picture Nominees to Ten

[Lzcutter]

From the reputable LA Observed website:


The Best Picture category will now have 10 nominees instead of five. It's a dramatic change that will upend the award process and probably generate a bit more excitement - not to mention boost the marketing costs for studios. The move is a return to Oscar traditions of the 1930s and '40s, when 10 nominees were common.

*As Tom O'Neil posts, the most famous top 10 list of nominees came in 1939. "Gone With the Wind" claimed the prize, but get a look at the other nine: "Dark Victory," "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," "Love Affair," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Ninotchka," "Of Mice and Men," "Stagecoach," "The Wizard of Oz" and "Wuthering Heights."

"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," [said academy President Sid Ganis].

[movieman1957]

Having rarely been to the movies lately and not watched the Oscars in years I can only imagine what 5 more movies will add to the length of the broadcast. Could they find 10 worth nominating?

[Vecchiolarry]

Hi Chris,

That's just what I was thinking!!!

I can see them having 10 pictures in years past, certainly decades past, but today???

Gawd help us if they expand the Actors & Actresses to 10, since there aren't even 5 now who should be there...
I once promised a friend that if & when they give Rosie O'Donnell an Oscar, that's when I'll shoot myself!!!

Larry

[movieman1957]

Hi Larry:

If that day comes then they will have to put a padlock on Hollywood and turn off the lights.

[myrnaloyisdope]

Well the cynic in me realizes that this is merely a cash grab. Having worked in an indy movie theatre around Oscar time, I was surprised to realize how many folk will scramble to watch nominated flicks in February in hopes of brushing up. So doubling the number of best picture nods to 10 is good business sense.

I'm pretty indifferent to the decision, I simply hope that it means more good films get some attention and legitimacy through being nominated.

And if it means a picture the quality of Crash don't win best picture again I'm in full support of that.

[mrsl]

I fully agree it will be difficult to find 10 movies each year to nominate. I'm wracking my brain right now trying to remember which movie won this year, I'll have to look it up, but once again great minds work in curious ways . . . where myrnaloyisdope (took me forever to realize there was no 'a' before dope), thinks Crash was bad, I still feel it was, and is, a great movie and every person in the U.S. should see it.

Anne

[myrnaloyisdope]

It's not so much that Crash is a terrible movie, rather that its a somewhat heavy-handed, overly-contrived and hokey melodrama masquerading as a powerful social statement. Not to deny that the issue of race is important, because it clearly is, but the film leaves little in the way of ambiguity...ironic given that it tries so hard to be ambiguous, I'm thinking of Matt Dillon's crisis of being a racist cop forced to help a Latino woman (whom he molested) after a car wreck. It all struck me as being so obvious, of course the racist guy is going to forced to confront his racism, and of course the non-racist cop is going do something racist (in fact shooting the black man who had just helped). Every story in the picture is filled with these contrivances. My end feeling was that it was a film made for white people (and film critics) to feel good about themselves. Finally a picture with a message, and look Hollywood can make films about people who aren't white.

The response to it strikes me as similar to Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?, with critics bending over backwards to pat themselves (and Hollywood) on the back for making a picture that dealt with race. All the while overlooking the contrivances of the film and that theme of race isn't handled with subtlety, nuance, or grace. There's nothing particularly edgy (even in 1967) about a white woman dating an absolutely perfect, a brilliant young black doctor, who's polite, well mannered, impeccably articulate, and does non-profit work.

As for Crash, it's a watchable picture and at times entertaining, but ultimately the film is completely aware of its own importance, and so heavy-handed in its approach that I felt like I was being beaten over the head with failed attempts at ambiguity.

I thought Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing was infinitely better at achieving a sense of ambiguity and at capturing a real and tangible tension about race...without resorting to far-fetched coincidences.

[mrsl]

As I said, we definitely have different interpretations of Crash, however, I did like the example of the six degrees of separation it used. The broken door lock, and the replaced locks, the ignorant choice of ammunition, and the fact that the gun did not work, and so many other links from one scene to another. It actually took me two viewings before I realized what was going on because it's so full of unknown actors to me, I didn't realize I was seeing them in later scenes. Even Sandra Bullock ( a big favorite of mine), I didn't recognize because she usually isn't made up the way she was. I didn't like the good cops story but he was too good to accept what he had accepted, and if more people could learn the lesson Matt Dillon did . . . wouldn't that be great. I usually don't want to see a movie that's going to teach me manners and how to live, but I forgave this one because of the way it was put together. Have a good weekend.

Anne

[MichiganJ]

I just heard about this and think it's a good idea. It should open up the list to films not generally considered, including action, comedy and international (sure, there is the foreign film category, but it only allows one film per country and only five countries represented!). Since the Best Picture sequence in the actual Awards ceremony goes rather quickly anyway, I don't think the broadcast itself will suffer much, either.

I know it's heresy to say, but there are a lot of great films still being made, and 2008 was a really good year. With the exception of one, the nominations for best picture were all worthy:
Slumdog Millionaire--which won
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button--seriously, one of the worst pictures to be nominated for Best Picture in a long time (Crash, included)

Just a few of other films from 2008 that were worthy of consideration:

Happy-Go-Lucky
Iron Man
Rachel Getting Married
Synecdoche, New York
WALL-E
Man on a Wire (Won Best Documentary but still could have been Best Picture)
The Wrestler
The Dark Knight
Appaloosa
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
The Vistor
The Class
Vicky Christina Barcelona
Son of Rambow