rethinking the oscars

As we head in to award season, it’s important to remember this will be the first year since 1944 there will be 10 nominees for Best Picture, not just the usual five.

While it sounds cool to include five more movies, it’s also a blatant move to garner more TV ratings for the February broadcast since in 2000 there were 46 million viewers and in 2009 there were 36 million.

So what would it change? Anything? To figure it out, let’s look back at the last four years of Oscars and another random year to see what, if any, difference it would have made (asterisk denotes the year’s winner). Also, I’ve re-ranked my top 5 movies of the year after some time to think about quality and rewatchability:

2008

Nominees: Slumdog Millionaire*, The Reader, Frost/Nixon, Curious Ben Button, Milk

Five more: The Dark Knight, Wall-E, The Wrestler, Iron Man, The Visitor

Still not making the cut: Doubt, Man on Wire, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gran Torino

My re-rank: The Wrestler, Milk, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon

isn't it enough that heath ledger won an oscar?

Would anything have changed?: Very possibly. Dark Knight and Wall-E seemed to get more attention when they were ignored, but Slumdog turned a wave of goodwill into the win and probably still would have.

Comments: Wait, this is the year that pushed things over the edge? The year that gave us The Reader (62 percent on RT)? And in such a vanilla year for movies, we can still easily go four more deep of movies that would still have been left out if the competition would have been at 10. In one way, that’s a good thing. It means the Academy won’t lose out on any of the controversy it loves creating so that people are talking about them. But in another way, the people who think their favorite movie of the year is just automatically going to be nominated are kidding themselves and could feel even more alienated by the process. Big box office performers like Dark Knight that 100 percent deserve to be in the Best Picture discussion don’t come around every year. Usually, the biggest box office hits are of the Transformers ilk that couldn’t sniff a best pic nod with Howard Stern’s nose.

2007

Nominees: No Country for Old Men*, Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood

Five more: Once, Into the Wild, In the Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, The Bourne Ultimatum

Still not making the cut: Knocked Up, Superbad, Eastern Promises, Charlie Wilson’s War, King of Kong

My Re-rank: Juno, Once, Superbad, King of Kong, No Country for Old Men

Would anything have changed?: No. Nothing in the second tier would have beaten out No Country.

Comments: Very top-heavy year for thinking-man’s movies. After those five nominees, making a case for more than two or three additional nominees is questionable. Then again, Atonement and Michael Clayton weren’t that good either. So that’s two years in a row we don’t need extra nominees — or at least can’t sufficiently fill 10 noms. Knocked Up would probably be on the list of 10, but since it sucks rocks, I couldn’t put it on. Man, Knocked Up sucks.

2006

Nominees: The Departed*, Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Queen

Five more: Pan’s Labyrinth, Children of Men, United 93, The Last King of Scotland, Borat

Still not making the cut: Casino Royale, Half Nelson, Notes on a Scandal, Flags of Our Fathers, Little Children

My re-rank: Little Miss Sunshine, Children of Men, The Departed, Borat, Pan’s Labyrinth

Would anything have changed?: Nope.

Comments: Now this is the year that should have forced the Academy’s hand. Those are 10 great movies — except for Letters from Iwo Jima, which I hated — and Children of Men not getting a nomination was a joke. Still, only Borat would be the “popular” pick, and I doubt anyone would be tuning in to the Oscars to see a toned-down Sacha Baron Cohen be disappointed by not winning. The one thing that could have saved it would be Casino Royale getting a nomination, because all of England would have been watching if that happened. But it just wasn’t one of the 10 best movies that year.

2005

Nominees: Crash*, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, Capote, Munich

Five more: The Squid and the Whale, Walk the Line, Cinderella Man, Syrianna, History of Violence

Still not making the cut: Wedding Crashers, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Batman Begins, Sin City, Hustle and Flow, The Constant Gardner

the team players

My re-rank: Wedding Crashers, Batman Begins, Cinderella Man, Good Night and Good Luck, The Squid and the Whale

Would anything have changed?: No.

Comments: Shame on me, I didn’t even put Wedding Crashers in my top 20 at the time. I know I remember laughing a good bit, especially at the beginning, but I remember being bored right after the quail hunt until the end of the movie. That’s the great thing about HBO and TBS — I’ve rewatched the movie about 100 times to the point where my wife will physically remove the remote control from my hands if I turn it on, and I don’t think I’ve watched the silly beach scene or the montage leading into the dinner scene where Owen Wilson gets his butt kicked. That makes the movie approximately 4,735 times funnier. And no matter what anyone tells you, Batman Begins is the better than Dark Knight. Of the last five years, this would have been the most crowded list of 10 nominees.

1999

Nominees: American Beauty*, Cider Hose Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, The Sixth Sense

Five more: Being John Malcovich, The Matrix, Fight Club, Boys Don’t Cry, Magnolia

Still not making the cut: Three Kings, Girl, Interrupted, Hurricane, American Pie, Election, Talented Mr. Ripley, Toy Story 2, Dogma, The Man on the Moon, South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, Summer of Sam, Go, Mansfield Park, Run Lola Run, Blair Witch Project

best. musical. ever.

My re-rank: South Park, American Beauty, Dogma, Being John Malkovich, Office Space

Would anything have changed?: No, this was the year that the blockbuster (Sixth Sense) made the cut.

Comments: Good time to look back on the last truly great year of movies and easily the best year for rewatchable comedy of the last 10 years. If any year should have generated some interest in getting more movies into the mix, it should have been this one. But back then, the Academy was so high and mighty and if anyone dared mention the idea, they would have stuck their noses up in the air and said something along the lines of, “If you didn’t make the cut, you didn’t deserve it.” Now that there are falling ratings and they need an infusion of interest, they have no problem making 10 nominees. Hypocrites. It would have been interesting to include The Matrix.

So what did we learn? Nothing, basically. Nothing will change whether there are 10 movies nominated or five. The Best Picture will still go to the best movie, or at least the one perceived by the Academy to be the best movie.

The lesson? Don’t buy into the 10 nominee thing. Even if Star Trek or Up gets nominated, their chances of winning are basically zero.