meh..

http://www.moviefone.com/insidemovies/2009/06/24/oscars-expand-best-picture-category-to-10-nominees/

If you've ever felt that a movie got robbed of a Best Picture Oscar nomination, raise your hand.

Oh, that's ... all of you? Well, you can breathe a sigh of relief -- and also brace yourself -- because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has just announced that for the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010, it'll be expanding the list of Best Picture nominees to include 10 candidates.

The expansion may come as a surprise, but it certainly isn't unprecedented. Ten Best Picture nominees was the norm from 1932 to 1943 (in 1934 and 1935, in fact, there were 12), but for the ceremony honoring 1944's best movies, the Academy switched that number to the current five.

The reason for this sudden change? "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," Academy president Sid Ganis said.

It's hard not to wonder whether the Powers That Be listened to the clamor surrounding last year's nominations, when movies like 'The Dark Knight' and 'WALL-E' were snubbed in favor of more traditional (some might say conservative) Oscar fare like 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' and 'The Reader.'

But could the expansion prove to be too much of a good thing? The most impressive extended list was probably 1939's, when 'Gone With the Wind,' the eventual winner, was nominated alongside heavyweights like 'Dark Victory,' 'Love Affair,' 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,' 'Of Mice and Men,' 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Wuthering Heights.' But then there was a year like 1943, in which 'Casablanca' beat out not just 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' but also a number of films that have since been lost to history ('The More the Merrier'? 'In Which We Serve'?)

What do you think? Will the expanded nominee list be good for the Academy Awards, making the race more competitive and diverse; or will it clutter an already crowded field? Will the ceremony become livelier, featuring nominated films that people actually saw ... or will it now drag on even longer, past the point of watchability?
-- By Patricia Chui

like hollywood makes 10 good films a year. lol



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>like hollywood makes 10 good films a year. lol

that were more deserving....

Unfortunately they did it a year late, after they got their asses reamed for not including That One "Overrated" Summer Blockbuster That Made a Shitload of Money and Was Also Good Despite the PTP Hate

Of course, I'm talking about WALL-E
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But yeah admittedly I liked Wall-E.

Probably more than most of the films nominated for best picture.

lol

Mostly it will just dilute the vote, so that winners will have a much lower percentage of the total vote. Seems like it will increase the chance of "spoiler" nominations.

The trades will be happy. They'll be able to sell even more "For Your Consideration" ads now.

But expanding the race doesn't help as much as not nominating BS like Benjamin Button. I also think that this could lead to more surprise victories since the voting could be split up more.

Too much water diluting the soup...or something. lol


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That's the only logic I see.

...I'm fine with it. It's weird, but I'm fine with it.

7-8 sounds a little bit better.

They are copying the National Board of Review. A truly welcome change would be to eliminate all of the campaigning so that the winners will not have the taint of not truly being the "best" films.

Say what you want about films deserving to be nominated but aren't, I can't think of 10 films in any year deserving of an oscar for best film.
Tell me they didn't vote on this already?


"Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which has been given for you to understand." Saul Williams

Fuck outta here. This could take 6 hours.

Dumb move.

ceremony will be even longer than it is now.

the main reason is that it makes the competition stronger as well as less predictable as which movie would of been the front-runner....plus it forces to review films that came out the ENTIRE year instead of select few that make it thru "oscar season"

whether you say they're overrated or not, "TDK" & "WALL-E" both deserved best pictre nods last year. especially TDK, considering it was nominated is almost all the major guild awards, got 8 oscar nominations (more than any other "best picture nod" aside from benji buttons & slumdog) and still ignored for a best picture nod due to "the reader" bump....

and the year before that, "ZODIAC" & "rataouille" were snubbed along with several other more deserving films...this would also give films outside of hollywood more of a play as well...

ten is too much, but i do agree that some films have been snubbed each year. but it's like 2 or 3... not 5. 7 would've been a good number.

>ten is too much, but i do agree that some films have been
>snubbed each year. but it's like 2 or 3... not 5. 7 would've
>been a good number.

Yeah - I co-sign this. 10 is just too much. It lessens the impact of even getting nominated.

PEACE

just gives the academy an out rather than having to really be critical and selective. Boo.

From the Los Angeles Times:

>COMPANY TOWN

Best picture change triggers a backlash

Many Oscar voters criticize the sudden decision to double the field of nominees for the top Academy Award, worrying it will cheapen the honor.

By John Horn Rachel Abramowitz and Ben Fritz

June 26, 2009

Let the backlash begin.

Like some of the most polarizing best picture winners -- "Shakespeare in Love," "Crash," "No Country for Old Men" -- the rules change made Wednesday to the Academy Awards' top category is splitting Oscar voters. The growing chorus of dissenters says the new inclusion of 10 best picture nominees will diminish the award's value, encourage bloc voting for obscure titles and possibly yield a best picture that wins with less than 11% of the total votes cast.

"I think it undermines the integrity of the Academy Awards," said marketing consultant Dennis Rice, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' public relations branch. "I have trouble most years finding five movies to nominate."

Said Robert Solo, an academy member for more than 35 years and the producer of 1978's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers": "It just eviscerates the whole value of the award. They did this because they're not getting the television ratings. Is this what the academy is about? They're worried the program would be canceled, but that's not why the academy was created. This is merchandising. This is not award giving."

The organization said Wednesday that it was doubling the number of best picture nominees from five to 10, starting with next year's awards (the ceremony is scheduled for March 7). Ratings for the annual Oscar broadcast have been plummeting, and even though this year's broadcast attracted more viewers -- 36.3 million -- than recent shows, the academy has been looking for ways to give the ceremony a more populist appeal.

"There will still only be one winner, but we have to change with the times," said producer Hawk Koch, an academy vice president and member of its board of governors, who strongly supports the rule change. "We are not only an organization of small independent films."

Koch did say, however, that because there will be 10 finalists for the top trophy, the academy will discuss at its next board meeting whether to amend its voting procedures. The film with the most votes -- no matter how small the total -- takes the statuette. All of the academy's roughly 5,800 members are eligible to vote for the nominees and winner.

"We want to make sure 11% doesn't get best picture," said Koch, a producer of "Untraceable."

The academy is expected to make another announcement Monday aimed at streamlining the show. Koch and other board members declined to say what it would be.

In increasing the number of best picture finalists, the awards group hopes it will be able to recognize box-office blockbusters that typically do not make the shortlist for Hollywood's highest honor.

But several academy members, some of whom said they were blindsided by the announcement, and Oscar campaign strategists said it wasn't clear whether the additional best picture spots would automatically go to box-office hits such as "Star Trek" and "Up" or to substantially less popular (but critically acclaimed) art movies.

Under the academy's voting rules, only the accountants know the tabulations, so no one involved in the rules change knows how close "Doubt," "The Wrestler," "The Dark Knight" and "Iron Man" came to being nominated last year.

Judd Bernard, an academy member and producer of "The Marseille Contract," said he was surprised by Wednesday's news and felt that the rank and file should have been asked about the rules change before it was announced. He was concerned that by trying to include blockbuster titles (the Oscar show with the all-time highest ratings honored "Titanic"), the academy would overvalue box-office returns.

"I do hope that this does not mean that just because a picture makes nine zillion dollars, it will automatically be an academy picture," Bernard said. "Next year's winner will be 'Transformers.' A picture makes a lot of money, but it doesn't mean it's a great movie. If excellence in achievement just meant money, then Bernie Madoff would get an Academy Award."

The change in rules will almost certainly boost the income of Oscar consultants, who can charge $15,000 a month for coordinating a movie's awards campaign and receive bonuses of as much as $20,000 for a nomination in a top category and another $20,000 for a win.

Several consultants, who declined to be identified, said they were concerned that small but cohesive blocs of Oscar voters -- there are about 400 academy members in Britain, who could band together, for example -- might be able to push a little movie into the big category.

Under the system used by the academy to select nominees (which is a different from the procedure to pick winners), the voting members will list their top 10 selections in order of preference.

Douglas Amy, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College who is an expert on voting systems, said that a movie can now become a nominee if as few as 525 people list it among their top selections (assuming that most members vote).

When there were five nominees, the minimum requirement was about 930, Amy said.

"The good part about this is it means a wider variety of movies that a significant minority like should be chosen," he said. With an extra five slots available, in other words, films that provoke strongly divergent opinions but have a passionate voting bloc have a better chance to land a nomination.

Movies that do not receive any first-place votes are eliminated from consideration for best picture. Therefore, it is conceivable that films that are popular with many voters but are nobody's favorite won't get nominations.

David Foster, a veteran producer ("The Mask of Zorro," "The River Wild") and academy member, said he welcomed the changes.

"Clearly something was wrong the last bunch of years. If something is wrong with something, you have to figure out a way to correct it," Foster said.

"I think it's good we expand. Some of the old rules are too old. This is the 21st century, for God's sake
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THIS IS A GODDAMN HERO!!!!

It's by far the best film I've seen this year.

We're still going to be left for 3 favorites though, even though the field is bigger. Even though they are expanding the field, a movie that is going to win would have been in the old 5 anyway.

It's a great honor to get nommed though, so at least more people get recognized.

which frankly I am not mad at.
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Ok...right now, if the 10 oscar picks were made right now...what would your picks be for the nominations.....

You can include movies that you've seen at festivals ahead of its US premiere....

thewrap.com:

>August 31, 2009, 9:51AM CDT

By: Steve Pond

Academy Makes Big Changes in Best Picture Voting

When the best picture is named at next year’s Academy Awards, the honor might not go to the film that receives the most votes.

In a major move that could transform Oscar campaigning, and one that the Academy has not talked about until now, voting for the slate of 10 best picture nominees has been changed dramatically.

Instead of just voting for one nominee, the way Academy members have almost always done on the final ballot, voters will be asked to rank all 10 nominees in order of preference -- and the results will be tallied using the complicated preferential system, which has been used for decades during the nominating process but almost never on the final ballot.

As a result, a film could be the first choice of the largest number of voters, but find itself nudged out of the top prize by another movie that got fewer number one votes but more twos and threes.

It sounds crazy, but there’s good reason to make the change at a time when dividing the vote among an expanded slate of 10 nominees could otherwise allow a film to win with fewer than 1,000 votes (out of the nearly 6,000 voting members).

“There are certain mathematical dangers with more nominees,” says the Academy’s executive director, Bruce Davis, who revealed the new rule exclusively to TheWrap. “You could really get a fragmentation to the point where a picture with 18 or 20 percent of the vote could win, and the board didn’t want that to happen.”

Voters will be asked to rank the 10 best picture nominees in order of preference, one through 10. Davis says that the category will be listed on a special section of the Oscar ballot, detachable from the rest so that a separate team of PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers can undertake the more complicated tabulation process.

Initially, PwC will separate the ballots into 10 stacks, based on the top choice on each voter’s ballot. If one nominee has more than 50 percent of the vote (unlikely, but conceivable some years), we have a winner.

But if no film has a majority, then the film ranked first on the fewest number of ballots will be eliminated. Its ballots will then be redistributed into the remaining piles, based on whichever film is ranked second on those ballots.

If those second-place votes are enough to push one of the other nominees over the 50 percent threshold, the count ends. If not, the smallest of the nine remaining piles is likewise redistributed. Then the smallest of the eight piles, then the smallest of the seven…

Eventually, one film will wind up with more than 50 percent.

The process is designed to discern a true consensus and uncover, in Davis’ words, “the picture that has the most support from the entire membership.”

But to show that broad support, in most years the best picture winner will need to not only be ranked number one on lots of ballots, but also to be picked number two, three and four.

The rule has the potential to rewrite the strategic rules for Oscar campaigning. In the past, studios and consultants simply fought tooth and nail for those number one votes -- which were, of course, the only votes Academy members could cast. Now it’ll be absolutely crucial to make sure your film is also in the top five on as many ballots as possible.

Maybe that’ll lead to more ads from broad-appeal films that might otherwise have seemed to be out of the running. Or maybe it’ll lead to more negative campaigning: after all, a good chunk of the voters don’t have to like your film the most, as long as you give them reasons to like it better than most of the other contenders.

Academy voters, by the way, don’t know about this yet. “I know people have been wondering about it, and even worrying about it,” says Davis. “At some point we’ll do a mailing, probably in the fall membership quarterly, to make it clear what’s coming up.”
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