How Having 10 Best Picture Nominees Will Affect You

Posted by Dr. Cole Abaius (cole.abaius@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 24, 2009

10-oscars

It won’t.

I’d love to leave the article at that, but Neil said that I wasn’t allowed to eat lunch until I wrote more than two words on the subject. Trust me, I tried to argue that “won’t” is technically two words since it’s a contraction, but he didn’t seem to care.

So the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is opening up the field for Best Picture by allowing twice the amount of contenders into the starting gates. This is both a new development and an old one since the nominations usually had more than 5 in the 1920s, 30s and 40s.

The money quote from President Sid Ganis:

“After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year. The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009 … Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going 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.”

Some are saying that this is a gimmick. Well, it is. As if there was anything non-gimmicky about awards shows in the first place. I understand the concept of praising the praise-worthy, of giving filmmakers a curtain call they rarely get, but for the most part award shows are built on gimmicks. I’m pretty sure that everyone realizes this and that no one really cares.

I personally like the idea of expanding the field, although 1) I’m not jumping in the air or anything over it and 2) it does seem odd to keep the field at such an arbitrary number. Why not widen the field with a simple points-margin concept allowing for anything above a certain threshold to be considered? Finding more than five great films a year is easy, finding ten is much harder, but either way there is going to be padding (or some films left out in the cold) if they stick to a static number every year. Who decided on 10? Why not 7? Or 16?

So I could see an argument that during the years where there’s padding, it will drop down the prestige of the award for whoever wins it. But I’m not convinced that this news is so totally earth-shattering as a lot of writers seem to think it is.

But it raises a great question – who would the ten Best Picture nominees from last year be?

What do you think?


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  • The five that were plus The Dark Knight, Doubt, The Wrestler, Wall-E and Gran Torino.

    I like the idea that Up may be a lock for '10.
  • The exact five I would name.
  • This seems like a way to include the more populist films (possibly resulting from the "outrage" that there weren't nominations for Dark Knight or Wall-E last year) without having to substitute the tailor-made Academy-friendly late December releases in the process
  • There weren't that many excellent films last year, so I can't think of five more to go in the Best Picture category.
  • Oh go on then I'll bite, which one?
  • Shit, you responded before my edit. To those who didn't see it, I said that I only like one of the films nominated for Best Picture, and that film is "Benjamin Button". I was appalled when "Dumbdog Millionaire" won, when that's a horribe, horrible, contrived piece of crap.
  • Lol I am fast on the reply when I'm not stacking shelves like a true student. I am surprised though that you like the film that got most of the flak (well except for The Reader). I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you've seen all five but any discerning fan can see the good points in a best picture nom. Not to say that these are the greatest ever but I guarantee that every film nominated is watchable and will have something worthy within. Frost/Nixon for example is a fantastically paced film that gives a boxing aura to an interview. 'Dumbdog' was always going to get the backlash but it is a worthy winner in my eyes. It perfectly encapsulated the time it was in and took hold and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Milk was awesome too and I found The Reader very engaging. We do agree on Benjamin Button though I thought it was marvelous.
  • Austin
    The fall deserved to get a best picture nom last year. It's bullshit the film didn't get best cinematography nom.
  • TJL
    So The Proposal has a chance at winning big?
  • Judson
    Yeah, I can't remember 10 best picture worthy films from last year. I barely remember any year where the 5 that are up for best picture would actually be worthy best picture winners. Oh well, the academy awards are rigged anyway.
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