Oscars to expand Best Picture noms to 10.

Is this good or bad? I'm on the fence. I think 5 are better but I can also understand the Academy's reasons for doing this. The Dark Night, Doubt and other films sqeezed out of consideration.

What do you think? Are there enough Best Picture contenders in a year? Really?!

I think it's a hopeful sign for the Academy to nominate films which are somewhat more commercially-successful films. For example, if they had 10 last year, you could have been sure that The Dark Knight and Wall*E would have been on there. I just hope that the it's not another case of throwing films some crumbs in some kind of PR manner.

The Academy nominated 10 films for a pretty long stretch from the early '30s through the early '40s. Of course, they sometimes would nominate 20 films for categories such as Best Musical Score. From what I understand, the Oscars will only have 10 nominees in the Best Picture category, so that will at least make them seem more compatible with every other group's Top 10s of the year.

I'll check back in after others have their say.

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I think its a good expansion though no quantity is ever good enough cause a year might come where more than 10s of movies suitable for best picture are superficially outstanding. Things do happen!

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I dont see how it'll make any difference at all. Yes, the movie that wouldnt be there before can always quote on the front of the DVD that it was "Oscar nominated". But if it didnt win there's no real point in advertising that fact at all because I dont know about anyone else but whether or not a movie was nominated or not really does not play a major factor in whether I decide to buy the DVD or see the film if it's still out at that time, but that's just me. This just seems like a pretty fruitless exercise, something for the acadamy to do during one of the slower months....

I dont know maybe I'm wrong, maybe people see that little sticker and think; "Oooh, the acadamy liked it, I probably will to" and they'll buy the DVD because of it. This is all this is really, a profit exercice.

Maybe I'm being to cynical here ... ?

Brother Blue you couldn't be more on point!

They used to do 10 in the old days.

It will just make the telecast longer then it should be.

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Yep, Brother Blue, you are being cynical.

And correct.

Wow, I saw this in my yahoo news and came over here to see what others were saying. I was pretty shocked to read it at first, but now I'm not surprised. In the last few years, their ratings are down, and the films they pick are not necessarily the popular films. They know they are in trouble with the public and in danger of becoming obsolete, so they're making themselves relevant again (they hope).

And it's all about the money. Always is.

Interesting move. I'll be curious as to how it plays out. Of course, sometimes, I'm not sure there are literally 10 films out there that deserve a nomination!

One thing's for sure though. There are certainly five MORE films every single year which are better than many they nominate.

I think that Brother Blue and Tramp have pretty much covered it.

They want a bigger and younger audience and the way you do that is include the films those people watch. Also, over the years, they've been getting more and more into a Woody Allen situation. In the same way that, while he gets older the women in his films stay the same age, so there was a time when Hollywood's best were also some of the most watched films of the year, but now they're often films that, without the Oscars, many of the people watching the Oscars wouldn't have even heard of.

Another thing I'll throw out there is that for a growing number of people, myself included, the Oscars is something I see or take interest in out of habit or a sense of tradition. We can be pretty sure who'll win what and we also know that it has little to do with merit and much to do with Hollywood politics, favourites and advertising. Hell, I only watched most of this years 'Oscar films' because they'd been nominated and, therefore, were in competition. I think Frost/Nixon was the only film I was looking forward to.

Why not expand it to twenty and have a swimsuit contest?

Isn't it really a beauty pageant anyways?

They could also have a Dancing Panda act.

Maybe an egg toss.

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Although I dont know what could possibly top what they did this year for the acting awards, by brining out 5 former winners to give a little speech about how wonderful the nominees were.



If it was done well it would still be embarrassing, but as it looked like it was completely off the top of someones head 10 minutes before the show starts it was just too hard to watch.

We want Hollywood to be pretentious, but come on, thats to far ...

One of the other problems with the Oscars is that they're becoming obsolete. We don't watched them to see what the best films are. We don't watch them to see who wins. Those who don't have much interest in the film side of it used to watch it for the glamour and to see what the ladies were wearing, but with the celebrity culture we have now providing countless pictures of people most of us don't even know, let alone movie stars, people aren't even bothered too much about that anymore. Besides, you'll see the dresses, etc much better in the pictures that'll be in most newspapers and magazines in the next couple of weeks, let alone all the internet pics. It goes on for a long time and many people can't be bothered to sit and watch it all when they can see the highlights/results/dresses/whatever whenever they want after the event.

Honestly, if The Oscars wasn't The Oscars and was just starting next year, what would be the incentive to watch it?

I'm much more likely to watch the Oscar highlights now than I am the live programme, unless Drew is presenting, of course.

Well, I'm probably always going to watch them. Much to my wife's chagrin I'm sure. That's her tough luck I'm afraid. This does seem a little silly to me. I'm kind of concerned too that this is just going to take away from the other categories.

And I disagree (Shocker!) that they are becoming obsolete. I think a few of the films that they do pick out can be pretty mediocre at best but the awards themselves are still pretty important to me. That's why I get upset when a movie like TDK gets shafted the way it does. Even if it didn't have a snowball's chance in hell to win Best picture it still deserved the prestige of being honored as a nominee.

Yeppers. I have to agree with PW. I'm a major history buff, and as far as film history goes, you can't get all that more serious than the Oscars, even if it's geared toward the English-speaking world.

I think 7 would have been better than 10, this is like the NFL adding 5 teams all in one year.

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Let me see if I understand what you're saying, Mark--maybe films that were not even nominated for Oscars would have won if there had been 10 nominations rather than 5? Is there any guarantee that Dark Knight and Wall*E or any other specific movie would have landed one of the extra 5 nominations if there had been 10 openings instead of 5?

Seems the whole idea is simply to boost TV ratings, but the TV audience doesn't make the nominations or decide what film wins the Oscar--just members of the academy who passed over Dark Knight and Wall*E the first time around. If they want a bigger audience on Oscar night, maybe they should put more money into a more entertaining program (I quit watching ages ago when it was well after midnight Central Time before they got to the top awards).

I've read some objections to the proposal on the grounds that the studios don't want to have to pay the extra dough to promote films for Oscars. Apparently that's quite an expense and doesn't always result in enough additional ticket sales to make it worthwhile.

They also use to have a sit-down dinner for academy members at the awards ceremony and announce the winners over the radio in "the old days" of 1930-1949 when weekly movie attendance was at its peak in terms of percentage of the population.

Right on. Last time around, I hadn't seen a single one of the nominated films or performances when the awards were announced. Yet I correctly predicted in this forum the winners for Best Picture and Best Actor based simply on the hoopla and my reading of Hollywood's version of political correctness. Wall*E was one of the few films I'd seen at the time, but I never thought it was of Oscar quality.