Academy's expanded Best Picture category rewards 'top 10' films

By Sarah Sluis

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that it was expanding the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten, most people speculated two things would happen: 1) crowd-pleasing, high-grossing movies would receive nominations. 2) smaller, independent movies would receive nominations. Well, the answers are in: the first thing happened, and the second not so much.

Three of the ten Oscar nominees for Best Picture were in the 2009 box-office top ten. Avatar is currently #1 for 2009, Up is #4, and The Blind Side is #8. If any movie was a long shot for Best Picture, The Blind Side was it. Many critics would have preferred to see Bright Star, a tiny but well-reviewed film, in that spot.

The last time a top ten film was even nominated was at the 76th Academy Awards, when Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (the #1 film of the year) swept the awards in Titanic-like fashion. That means that before this year, five years passed where no movie in the top ten received a Best Picture nomination. If the goal of expanding the number of nominees is to boost ratings and make more average, non-eclectic moviegoers feel the Academy Awards reflect their own "Best Films," it appears the Academy has succeeded.

That's not to say these movies are bad or don't deserve to be nominated. Last year seemed to be a particularly strong one for blockbusters. I'm right there with Avatar and Up. District 9 (#27) was good, but it didn't make my top ten and I don't think it's quite original enough (beyond its opening sequence) to deserve the nomination. But with a heavy-handed look at racism a la Crash, I guess I shouldn't be surprised it was nominated.

On the other hand, movies at the other end of the spectrum haven't entirely been neglected. The Hurt Locker (#130), A Serious Man (#142) and An Education (#144) all received nominations. Last year, the lowest-ranked film was #120 (Frost/Nixon), so not only are these films a bit lower on the list, there are also three of them instead of the expected two you would get when you double the amount of nominees.

Overall, I think the inclusion of ten nominees better reflects the amount of quality movies out there, and does allow for more commercial (to a greater extent) or more specialized (to a lesser extent) films to receive nominations. At least when a so-so movie squeezes in, there are nine, instead of four, other movies there to balance it out.