Pajiba

Does this mean that "Paul Blart, Mall Cop" has a chance now?

Oh Boy! The Oscar Broadcast will be even longer! Unless they get rid of some of those technical Oscars, like Best Screenplay.

The telecasts have been down in ratings because they're boring and they suck. Cut it down to a half hour and fill the audience with rowdy soccer hooligans if you want to boost ratings.

Um, ten nominees? Besides nominating more movies for Best Picture, I'm confuzzled as to why you need to expand the running race.
Honestly, name ten truly fantastic movies from last year or any year. Ten films that NEEDED to be nominated but were not, or were for other categories but were snubbed for the big award of the night. That's the way it's going to be, and ten nominations won't change that. Arranging ten films in the category is like saying that each film is on an equal level, which we all know is not true. Titanic amid the spectacle and visuals could not hold a candle to L.A Confidential. Pulp Fiction was a fresh burst of light, and it lost to Forrest Gump. The truly magnificent movies will still get snubbed as they have in the past. Either way, the Academy will still nominate freaking Benjamin Button and ignore that amazing obscure movie with that guy from that one TV show you saw in the 90's.

It's a rare* year that Hollywood gives the world ten films that could be considered Oscar-worthy, even if you stretch that concept to its limits. To me, this means an increase in lulz since a good 60% of each year's nominations will be ridiculous.

On the plus side, maybe this will open the category a bit and allow categories of films which are usually ignored (comedies, science fiction, suspense/horror) to get a bit more recognition.

Of course, the real reason the Academy's doing this is to try to get more butts into theater seats. Five extra films a year will get to trumpet themselves as "Oscar-nominated."

*Rare? Who am I kidding? Nonexistent!

For the record, I'm as big of a cynic as anyone here, but I disagree with this prevailing grumpy sentiment that any given year does not offer 10 films that are at least arguably Best Picture nominee-worthy. I can't think of a year that hasn't, and - if you think that's the case - you don't go out of your way enough to see what the indie and foreign film worlds have to offer. You're only paying attention to what the Hollywood advertising machine has to offer. (Granted, 2009 is looking even weaker than 2008 so far.) So, no, that's not the flaw here.

The flaw here is twofold.

One, logistically-speaking it does seem a bit of a joke. Five is a good number, and after a night of reading five nominees in all the other categories, it's going to seem awfully silly to all of the sudden be reading off ten in the most important category of them all. This does potentially devalue and dilute the field.

Second, as I said, it's not that the good movies aren't out there and worthy of recognition. It's a question of if they will be recognized even with the addition of five nominees. In the end, I think it will be something of a wash. That is, commercial films might sneak in at a slightly higher clip, but perhaps one or two additional arthouse films will sneak in as well that would not have made it before. I'm all for giving the latter a little more attention, so I have no problem with that element.

But seriously - 10 nominees? As I said, without instant-runoff voting, it's going to be chaos.

I would almost rather see a Best Picture - Comedy category added to the mix like the Globes. Having a ten picture field just seems so bleh. Fewer votes needed to win, more potential for nominees to be terrible. Just seems like you lose more from this than you gain. And seriously... those of us who've tried putting together Top 10 lists can vouch for how hard it is sometimes to fill 8, 9, and 10 with films that you really really like. With a wider field, it's now guaranteed that there will be some disappointing nominees every year.

I'm having trouble with this one as well. Chances are that the barrel will have to be scraped. And so what, we'll have an Amadeus up against a Spiderman?

I can't think of even 10 movies that are deserving of Oscar's....how ironic is this shit gonna be?

Unless they get rid of some of those technical Oscars, like Best Screenplay

Well, there's Best Adapted and Best Original screenplay. I think the real addition here should be a new category like Best Reboot/Remake - and then get rid of Best Original because, you know...why pretend anymore?

After a year when only one "blockbuster" made the nomination list, and following a general trend in which more "indy" flicks are getting recognition, I can't help but think this is a way to shoehorn some more mainstream Hollywood fare into the running.

Thank Godtopus, the Oscars show is NEVER long enough for me. It should be at LEAST as long as your average 7-hour college football game ... no, as long as the Jerry Lewis telethon. Wait, it should be a miniseries! It should last a week! A MONTH! A ...

Hey, you guys in the white jackets, where'd you get that big net?

I'm wondering if this is in response to pressure from the studios, as well as the internal pressure to pump up their own broadcast numbers, since the studios often get a bump at the theaters from the nominations. More nominations = more films getting a bump, though many of them will have left theaters by the time the noms are announced.

The math is vexing though, because the obvious question, as noted above, is, You mean you weren't already nominating the top five? You must be adding the sixth-best through tenth-best, because you couldn't possibly have left off the best picture or a frontrunner before, right?

I think this is a sign of a bigger problem; the overall quality of movies as a collective. Most movies that come out from year to year are inherently flawed in that they are created to make money rather than as a work of cinematic art. Even many of those that are turn out to be lacking in entertainment. The result is this asinine semi-regular practice of picking some artsy-fartsy flick that is supposed to somehow sum up the entire year of productions, while other more memorable and enjoyable projects are left without even the recognition of nomination.

The expansion of the nominations isn't to give those movies a better chance at winning an Oscar, rather it's only going to be used to give a fleeting acknowledgment to a movie that might have earned both money and accolades from the viewing public, but not tongue baths from the critics.

Make no mistake, your annual screwing of worthy films will still continue uninterrupted. But now a movie like last year's "Dark Knight" will at least have a chance of more recognition than some lesser nomination like "best sound mixing". (Yeah, I'm pretty sure there was something more to that film than foley that made it so popular- but heaven forbid we give comic book movie the top award, right?)

However, if it's "Ordinary People" over "Raging Bull" or "Crash" over well...damn near everything else, you want to see, rest assured the Academy still has its collective head up its ass. The crappy snob movies will still most likely get the statues, they'll just cock tease five more movies first.

would someone more knowledgeable than i explain how this might affect actor pay scales. I wonder if there's correlation to the "Oscar Nominated" tag and pay. Or is that all based on box office intake?

So instead of three unworthy nominees every year there will be six or seven. Great.

DarthCorleone and Maryscott O'Connor have this exactly right. Coming in first in a field of ten -- majority support not required -- doesn't mean a whole lot.

The transition should be easy for the Academy to make, though, because they already use a closely related voting method to select the five, or ten, or however many, nominees. It's called choice voting or the single transferable vote rather than instant runoff, but it looks the same to voters. They just rank the candidates in order of preference.

For selecting the several finalists, choice voting insures that all segments of the film community contribute to the selection. For selecting the one winner, instant runoff insures majority support.

With the current method of choosing the final winner, ten nominees is a terrible idea. With instant runoff, it could be a very good one.