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The Oscars go to 10 Best Picture nominees
Wednesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that starting next year there will be 10 nominees for Best Picture.
I can’t quite decide if this is good news or bad news. Maybe it’s both. But I can tell you this much: I’m quite sure this is a direct response to a certain movie not getting nominated last year. it was called The Dark Knight.
The theory lately goes that the Oscars have been losing ratings and relevance because they don’t nominate popular hits enough. People complain the nominated pictures are too stuffy, pretentious or otherwise inaccessible/unseen to Joe and Jane Average, so viewership of the show has been declining.
That argument was always bunk anyway. People have increasingly short memories and forget the fact that Ghost and Four Weddings and a Funeral were both Best Picture nomineees. Neither of those is exactly “arty,” but still, there sat Ghost alongside Goodfellas and there sat Four Weddings alongside Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction.
And it’s more than a little disingenuous of the Academy to suggest this hearkens back to the 1930s and 40s when there were 10 nominees, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind were all nominated in the same year. Give me a break. 2009 isn’t 1939, and this ain’t no golden age for movies.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying popular movies shouldn’t be nominated. The Dark Knight absolutely should have made the cut. So should have WALL-E. Had there been 10 nominees last year, the field might have looked like this:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
The Dark Knight
Doubt
Gran Torino
WALL-E
The Wrestler
The good news is that deserving films that wouldn’t have made the cut will now. Pixar’s Up now has a real shot at the Best Picture prize, rather than having to settle for Best Animated Feature. Heck, even Star Trek has a chance now. The general consensus is that it is one of the most flat-out entertaining films of the year. It will deserve a nomination.
At the same time, it’s going to be a stretch sometimes to fill those 10 slots. And in so doing, I think Oscar will end up cheapening itself. Now that it’s that much easier to make the cut, maybe it’s not such an honor to be nominated after all.
What do you think of having 10 nominees? If this means movies like The Dark Knight get nominated, will you be more likely to watch the Oscars?
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Oscars Sunday Night
Comments
By SRCputt
June 26, 2009 4:15 PM | Link to this
The Original Song category just got adjusted again. The same minimum score rule put in a couple of years ago remains, but now there is no minimum amount of nominees. The executive branch of the music committee votes on each song on a 10 point scale (as has been done the past four years I believe). If no song gets an 8.25, no award will be given. If only one song gains the score, there will be two nominees as the song closest to the 8.25 will get nominated as well. If 2-4 songs meet the score, then they will be nominated and there will be that many nominations. And if 5 or more songs score that high, then the five highest scoring songs will be the nominees. I’m thinking some Academy members have felt there have been too many mediocre songs performed on the show lately.By SRCputt
June 25, 2009 10:36 PM | Link to this
These were guesses of how the nominations would have gone, not what should have happened. I actually haven’t seen American Gangster, so I can’t speak to that. But I have seen Gladiator, and films from that year I would rate higher include picture nominees Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Traffic, Erin Brockovich, as well as (from other categories) Cast Away, Requiem for a Dream, You Can Count on Me, Almost Famous, O Brother Were Art Thou, Wonder Boys, and Amores Perros. And that’s just sticking to the nominated films I’ve seen.By Allie D.
June 25, 2009 5:29 PM | Link to this
All good points on what movies could have been nominated in previous years if there had been more spots available. Children of Men and Constant Gardener should have definitely gotten the nomination. American Gangster didn’t quite deserve a Best Picture nom, but again, we’re starting to get to the bottom the barrel when we get closer to 10 movies. No, American Gangster wasn’t a “Bad” movie, but it wasn’t excellent either. I agree that The Reader definitely didn’t deserve to be nominated, just as I would argue that Gladiator should NEVER have won Best Pic. lolBy Vistavision
June 25, 2009 2:56 PM | Link to this
Nobody seems to be talking about what this does to the mechanics of winning.By SRCputt
June 25, 2009 1:35 PM | Link to this
Would Crash still have won in 2006? I wonder. Brokeback Mountain’s defenders probably stay with that film, but would Crash’s votes been more spread out? Crash beat Brokeback Mountain, Capote (why was THAT nominated?), Good Night and Good Luck, and Munich. I’m guessing the next five would have been The Constant Gardener, Walk The Line, A History of Violence, Cinderella Man, and Pride and Prejudice.By SRCputt
June 25, 2009 1:24 PM | Link to this
For the 2007 ceremony, The Departed beat Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine abd The Queen. This year may have contributed to the ten film decision. I would bet the next five nominees would have been Pan’s Labyrinth, Children of Men, Dreamgirls, United 93, and, yes, the documentary winner An Inconvenient Truth. That is a more interesting list, and I will maintain forever Pan’s Labyrinth wins from that list.By SRCputt
June 25, 2009 1:18 PM | Link to this
Fun to look back at past years and try and figure out what would have been nominated. I checked the 2008 ceremony, when No COuntry For Old Men beat Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, and There Will Be Blood. I’m guessing the other nominees that year would have been The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ratouille, The Bourne Ultimatum, Away From Her, and the last spot up for grabs between Into The Wild, American Gangster, Persepolis, and The savages. None of those additional films would have beat No Country for Old Men.By SRCputt
June 25, 2009 1:05 PM | Link to this
And if last year had ten nominations, The Reader STILL would not have deserved its nomination.By SRCputt
June 25, 2009 1:00 PM | Link to this
I have maintained since the ceremony that The Departed would not have won if Pan’s Labyrinth had been nominated, as it won all of its tech nominations. I believe this could make it more possible that a film could build post nomination and win, as I believe Driving Miss Daisy did. If the film’s a sweep winner, as Slumdog Millionaire was last year, it won’t change anything, but may make the predictions game a little more fun.By Allie D.
June 25, 2009 12:39 PM | Link to this
I like that they’ve expanded the pool, but 10 is perhaps too many. 7 or 8 may have been better. Open the field just enough to let in those few movies that slip through the cracks every year. I would like to present more chinks in the “Oscars only honor stuffy art house movie” armor. Best Picture Winners in recent memory: Braveheart, The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, The Departed. Every single one of these movies was a mainstream movie that aired on big screens all over America, made millions and millions of dollars, and were seen by many “average” Americans, and praised by them as well. The movies that didn’t quite fall into that category? The more “arty” Best Picture Winners in recent memory? Crash, and MAYBE Slumdog Millionaire, but that movie grew in popularity by word of mouth. I think by the time it won its Oscar, it was playing on a LOT of screens. People don’t seem to realize that while movies like The Reader, In the Bedroom, Gosford Park, The Pianist, Capote, etc may win nominations for Best Picture, they almost NEVER actually win. The categories where those films see winning nominees are in the Actor/Actress categories, and it doesn’t appear the Academy has widened that particular pool yet. If anything, The Academy Awards has always been a shrine for mainstream film. The thing is, it’s mostly been a shrine for mainstream GOOD films.