Hollywood will congratulate itself twice as much in 2010, thanks to yesterday's announcement that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will double the Best Picture field from five to 10 nominations at next year's Oscar ceremony.
"After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year," said Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis. "The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009."
It's a strange move for the Academy, and one that is almost certainly a response to last year's Oscars, which were criticised for overlooking acclaimed genre fare like The Dark Knight and WALL·E.
The last time 10 movies were in the running for Best Picture was in 1943, when Casablanca took home the award. The following year saw the field restricted to five nominees, an imposition that's been in place ever since.
While mainstream films like Pixar's Up – currently enchanting critics the world over – are likely to benefit from the new rules, the widened field will probably only result in the inclusion of a couple of token popcorn flicks that, while critically hailed, have a snowball's chance in hell of actually winning. Such additions may, however, popularise an awards ceremony that is increasingly under fire for only recognising a certain type of film, which may be precisely what the Academy has in mind with this revamp.
0 comments:
Post a Comment