The Incredible Growing Best Picture Category

You’re all winners! 

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that the Best Picture category next year will be open to ten movies. For decades, five films have been nominated for the top Oscar. Early in the Academy history, there was no set number of nominations for the category. The last time ten movies were nominated was 1943, when “Casablanca” won.

The New York Times says that there was a lot of support for the change amongst the Academy higher ups. The reason, of course, is money. There is a widespread belief that a best picture nomination provides a bump at the box office. This has become less of a factor in recent years, though, as movies head to DVD earlier and earlier.

A lot of the complaints about nomination neglect came from supporters of last summer’s blockbusters like “The Dark Knight” and “Wall*E,” which didn’t exactly need box office help and were well out of the theaters. But here’s where TV comes in–when there isn’t a movie that everyone has seen up for the big award, like the two aforementioned films, that’s going to lose a lot of potential audience members. There’s nothing ABC hates more than seeing a Best Picture category filled with serious indie movies that have only opened in New York and LA.

What is lost in this change, though, is the Argument. You know, the argument you have with people over the movie that was left out that you thought deserved a nomination. Those kind of discussions provide a lot of the buzz that carries the interest in the awards between the announcement of the nominations and the actual ceremony. This is why the NCAA has held out so far against people’s calls to expand the men’s basketball tournament from 65 to 128 or whatever–because the argument is great publiciy.

Ten movies? Good luck finding ten movies that really deserve to be called “Best Picture.” If ten movies are scraped up and the one you were cheering for didn’t make it in, you probably just have very specific taste in film.