The annual announcement of the Oscar nominations always offers up plenty of fodder for discussion. But before we get there, travel back in time with me to June 2009 when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS for short) made a canny if questionable PR move: after 66 years of a 5-wide Best Picture shortlist, the 2009 film year would bring us 10 (!) Best Picture nominees. That announcement reinvigorated Oscar buzz—so many people were talking about the Academy Awards last June** it felt just like February. But it’s way too soon to tell if the decision has reinvigorated Oscar itself. That’s a more complicated prospect, and you need more than one go at an experiment to see if it works. You also may need better movies. No matter which lucky film is named the Best of the Best, none of them will be as good as Casablanca, the last winner from a 10-wide Best Picture field way back in March of 1944.
* It's true. The Academy's June announcement set the web on fire. Right here at TFE, the blogpost containing that information had the most comments ever, topping the 200 mark and far outpacing other recent comment crazes like the August: Osage County casting ideas
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5 comments:
I bet the ten-wide thing will increase Oscar watching; lets face it, all of the South will be watching (I know it's stereotypical to say they love The Blind Side, but seriously, they do). All of my relatives in a rich suburb of Atlanta have been RAVING about it, and how everyone they know loves it.
Since the film is catered to rich southern white people, I'm not surprised that so many of them love it.
Nathaniel please, what do you need to update your Film Bitch Awards? Just say it and I´ll try to give it to you! PLEASEEE!! I need them!!
Ugh, I just embarrassingly posted the same comment under the Wheels handle three times to your Trifecta post. SORRY. I'm curious, though, why you think Broadbent is the most recent nice guy winner in the supporting category.
I'm pretty happy (as I always am) about the nominations, there's a lot to be optimistic about. But I'd like to gripe about how annoying is to be unexcited about a supporting actor shortlist that includes Plummer, Tucci and Damon. I love those guys, but have zero interest in the movies they're nominated for.
How about we just let the writers do the nominating for all the other branches from now on? They do such a stellar job of it and they had a banner year. Not only did the go out of their way to nominate such small gems as The Messenger and In the Loop, but they were completely immune to any peer pressure to hop on the box office bandwagons and hand out a nomination to the clunky, obvious script for Avatar, or worse yet The Blind Side (shudder)
Meanwhile over in the acting branch their handing out noms like so much Halloween candy, clogging up their rosters with the likes of Invictus, Lovely Bones and Nine - films which haven't had a pulse for weeks.
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