Comments on: Why Did The Academy Go From 5 to 10 Best Picture Nominees? The Money, Of Course

By: William Hughes

William Hughes — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:12:56 +0000

Whoopee. Instead of having five obscure, foreign made Motion Pictures we’ll have ten of them up for the award. The Big Moneymakers will continue to get snubbed, and the apathy will continue.

By: Craig

Craig — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:24:51 +0000

The Golden Globes basically have 10 movies for Best Picture. 5 for comedy/musical and 5 for drama. Having 10 movies instead of 5 nominated will just get more comedies and mainstream movies in.

By: Richard Steven Hack

Richard Steven Hack — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:26:55 +0000

Matt Yglesias makes the same point over at his blog: they need to change the voting process, otherwise it makes no difference if the same five arty pics are the only ones with a change of winning.

By: Kathy B.

Kathy B. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:35:34 +0000

They would be better off cutting out the technical awards. The oscars are too boring.

By: Terrence

Terrence — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:13:38 +0000

This is a travesty. Both the Emmys and the Oscar are showing signs of desperation over the ratings of their annual telecasts.

A better solution would be the following:
- Require a 60% distribution across the country to be considered for a Best Picture nomination
- Add a new category for independent films that don’t have the budget for such widespread distribution
- Increase the PERFORMANCE and DIRECTING nominees to Six or Seven

If they kick out needless edited packages and time-wasting production numbers (save for one at the top of the show), then they will have plenty of time for the expanded list of nominees and the additional category without going over three hours and without limiting acceptance speeches.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:10:16 +0000

If a movie like the Dark Knight can’t get a Best Picture nod with 5 noms, whats the point of making it 10? Just to shove in 5 popular movies that don’t have a chance of winning? Just having Wall-E, Tropic Thunder and/or The Dark Knight nominated isn’t going to help ratings if they don’t have a chance of winning.

This seems aimed more at giving studios more opportunity to say their movies are “Best Picture nominees!”

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:49:01 +0000

Anthony, you forget to factor in the population increase since the 70s. The population has grown by more than 100 million people.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:42:54 +0000

I’d say that, given the huge increase in the number of channels (i.e. viewer choices) since the 1970s, that a drop from 44 million viewers to 32 million is acceptable.

I think that increasing the nominees enhances the possibility that a sub-standard movie will either win the Oscar or dilute the voting enough so that a less-deserving choice wins by default.

By: nkinsey

nkinsey — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:03:39 +0000

No matter what, 5 or 10 entries, the same winner will be chosen. I don’t really think this is anything but a money-making attempt. I HIGHLY doubt it will impact the actual results, since best picture is pretty much a lock from the beginning. My question is: The awards ceremony usually lasts 3 hours. Seeing as how the academy awards draws the show out so much, will the show now be 6 hours, or just FEEL like it?

By: JT

JT — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:47:52 +0000

I think they did it to finally give Pixar the Oscar they deserve for “Up”. Make room for titles that may have been kept out because there wasn’t room and there was another category to shove them in. A prediction nonetheless.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:34:40 +0000

Wait… were the Oscars on last night?

By: AZTop

AZTop — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:34:03 +0000

This creates an interesting dynamic for best director. With only 5 dominations in that category a lot of directors of “oscar nominated” best film entries will not get nominated. There’s always a lot of complaints that directors don’t get recognition for their flims.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:31:42 +0000

Lame. This goes a long towards making getting nominated the opposite of a big deal/accomplishment. Even though it will lead to more nominated films, people still should realize that certain films nominated have no chance of actually winning.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:57:30 +0000

Who’d like to make a bet that the Academy reverses course within two months?

By: dave

dave — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:54:47 +0000

how will this actually effect the outcomes? With 5 nominees you must figure that a lot of voters were casting their final vote for their second favorite films, but now with nominees spread out over 10 films, it hardly seems that the best film will be any sort of academy consensus. As a big moviegoer, it was always nice to see the small arthouse gem, that you discovered in February of the year before, come out of nowhere and grab a nomination, but more often then not the arthouse films that get nominated, are the shallow oscarbait films, with marketing budgets 3-5 times the size of the films filming budget. Hardly, small. You still have to dig for those.

Hopefully UP will get nominated this year, though.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:54:31 +0000

LOL!

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:43:57 +0000

“They” will, when they get them.

By: FNC

FNC — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:40:28 +0000

are they going to post the overnight ratings from last night, Wednesday?