Looks like we basically nailed it.
I’m betting invictus came in 11th, even.
Not bad at all. Still…“Look at us, America! We’re still relevant! We’re still relevant! We nominated something besides a ‘rich white people are stupid and bad’ movie! Please watch the ceremony!”
(Sorry, that might have been a little unfair to the Academy. But I am glad to see Up and Avatar nominated.)
I missed this until I saw the huge number of nominees for the year. Why the change?
The general feeling was that by widening the net, it’ll make more room for popular movies to be in the running (and thus, improving the rather dismal ratings the awards show has gotten recently). This was largely seen as a response to both The Dark Knight and WALL-E last year getting major box office returns, fantastic critical reception, and a major haul of nominations (8 and 6 respectively) but neither getting a Picture nod because of the rather narrow, calcified prejudices (anti-genre, anti-animation) that persists among some Academy members.
The result? Of the 5 films this year that would’ve likely been excluded if they had kept the slate to only 5 films, one is animated (Up), one is a standout genre pic (District 9), one is a box office sensation (The Blind Side), one is a critical darling (A Serious Man), and one is a foreign indie (An Education), all of which would’ve probably been overlooked before.
So that part of the plan (spreading the wealth) seems to have worked. But given that Avatar is in the running, it’s impossible to tell this year if broadening the field will improve the ratings, since a lot of people are likely to watch anyway because of the Cameron film. But I suspect a lot of people in the industry are happy with the result, so it looks like they’ll probably keep it for now.