Next Year's Oscars Will Have Ten Best Picture Nominees

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and ABC announced today that the Oscars will expand its Best Picture list to 10 films for next year's ceremony. They're pitching it as a return to tradition but in fact the last time 10 films were nominated for Best Picture was in 1943 when Casablanca won the top prize. (Hmm, since that one triumphed, maybe it's not such a bad idea.)

Obviously, they're still smarting from last year's ceremony when critically acclaimed and wildly popular movies like The Dark Knight and WALL-E weren't in the running. But what do you think? Is this going to cheapen the prestige of being nominated for Best Picture? Or will it broaden the appeal of the Oscars and let the list of nominees actually reflect the range of good movies shown throughout the year?

To refresh your memory, the five nominees for Best Picture from 2008 were:

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionare

With of course, Slumdog becoming top dog. Now based strictly on total number of nominations in every category, if the top nominees became the top picks for Best Picture, the list last year might have been:

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
Changeling
The Dark Knight
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E

Is that a more exciting list? Of course, nominations don't mean you will automatically make it on the list for Best Picture. Other acclaimed films that might have made it onto the Best Picture list include:

Happy-Go-Lucky
Iron Man
Waltz With Bashir
The Wrestler

If the list means popular and acclaimed films like WALL-E and The Dark Knight are in the mix, it'll be a success. If it just means more art house films like Doubt and Revolutionary Road, the list will rightly be seen as more of the same. Next year, if UP is not nominated for Best Picture, there will rightly be an outcry. Almost as loud an outcry if something commercially successful but godawful like Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen does make it.

So what do you think about this radical change by the Oscars?

Comments

[3fingerbrown]

A 10-movie field sure came in handy in 1939. These were the nominees:

Dark Victory
Gone With the Wind
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Love Affair
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Ninotchka
Of Mice and Men
Stagecoach
The Wizard of Oz
Wuthering Heights

Of course, not every year is 1939. there were a few years in the '80s when it was tough to scrape up 5 worthy nominees.

[BlackJAC]

Given this year's questionable slate, I doubt this will play out well.

[Giada]

Added The Visitor twice

Rachel Getting Married

[Xenussister]

I think it's a great idea, and I like your list. I'd switch out Revolutionary Road for The Wrestler though. I love the actors and the director, but RR was not better than The Wrestler. I kept thinking, just move back to New York, you morons.

My own, laughably unrealistic, list:

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
Changeling
The Dark Knight
The Fall
Frozen River
In Bruge
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Tropic Thunder (I know I know, I *said* it was unrealistic)
WALL-E
The Wrestler

I know that list has some iffy titles. Tropic Thunder is not "better" than Doubt, which is a very good movie and deserved its nomination. It's just that I enjoyed TT more. I'm glad Robert Downey Jr. got nominated and I wasn't upset that the movie itself didn't get nominated. The Fall is not a great movie, but it did have the best performance by an actress, and was the most visually stunning movie of the past several years.

In other threads, people are saying there weren't enough good movies. That's crazy talk. I saw 170 movies in the theater last year and STILL missed some excellent movies I wish I had seen (like Snow Angels, Encounters at the End Of the World, and Trouble the Water, just to name a few). Fully 3/4 of the films I saw were worthwhile and at least half were excellent.

==
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[Giada]

An extensive number of films you've viewed ....

My choice's would be:

The Visitor
Doubt
Revolutionary Road
Frozen River
The Wrestler
Milk
Slumdog
The Dark Knight
In Bruges
The Visitor