What will it mean to have between 5-10 Best Picture Oscar nominees?

By Sarah Sluis

Just two years ago, the Academy mixed it up by announcing that it will expand the number of Best Pictures nominees from five to ten. Now it's modifying its decision, allowing for at least five but no more than ten nominees. In order to receive a nomination, the movie must be the first pick of at least 5% of Academy voters. This will change the Oscar game, primarily for the good.

1. Everyone at the table deserves a seat at the table. Looking back at the nominees for 2009 and 2010, I was pleased with the films that were nominated. Sure, there were some that weren't normally Oscar material--like District 9, teeny-tiny Winter's Bone, and 127 Hours, but for the most part that helped punch things up. Under the new rules, we'll know that any film that's nominated got at least 5% of the vote. There won't be speculation that a movie like 127 Hours, The Blind Side or even Up made it just because they needed ten nominees. I hope this means some of the smaller indies that received nominations, like A Serious Man, Winter's Bone, and The Kids Are All Right, won't entirely disappear from the running.

2. Recognizing there can be more than five good films a year. Everyone in Hollywood wants another 1939, widely considered one of the strongest movie years on record. In that year, for example, I've seen six of the ten Best Pictures nominees, compared to a couple in the years directly before and after. But even in a year of several future classics, at least a few of the films didn't endure. According to the Academy's releases, there would have been anywhere from five to nine nominees in the years 2001-2008.

3. Getting rid of "snubbed" lists. One of the recurring Oscar-time features is the list of films, actors, and actresses that turned in classic performances that went unrecognized by the Academy. This can be a little embarrassing for the organization, especially when it exposes their biases (or "preferences," if you're feeling nice) for certain types of films. Of course, this doesn't guarantee that these types of films still won't be excluded from the running.

If they are, it will be even worse, since that means less than 5% of Academy members thought highly of the film. Some of the Academy's famous snubs include a number of Alfred Hitchcock films, including Vertigo, Psycho, and North by Northwest. Films that would become calling cards for directors, like Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot, Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, were all excluded from the Best Picture race. The greatest musical of all time, Singin' in the Rain, also didn't make the cut.

I'm impressed that the Academy has changed the rules for such a significant part of their awards. To do it two times in just three years is even more eyebrow-raising. The Academy was willing to admit that the ten-nominee system wasn't working out according to their expectations. We may be far from Oscar season, but the most exciting part of this year's Oscars may be January 24th, when we find out which films, and how many, were nominated after the Academy's tweaking.