New rule for Best Picture Nominees

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OscarGuy
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Post by OscarGuy »

This could also be the break that Focus Features has been needing. They always seem to be left off the list when some of their best films get sidelined, presumably in the 6th/7th-place field. I also expect this means Bill Condon may get some pic nominations alongside Ed Zwick. Condon's films always seem to "barely" miss the boat.
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Post by dreaMaker »

Actually, i m happy. :)
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Someone made this suggestion at another message board: Do not announce ANY nominees for the Best Picture category. All films nominated for at least one Oscar in any given year are eligible to be voted on for Best Picture. It would make the awards a little more exciting.
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Post by Damien »

From the L.A. Times:

HOW THE ACADEMY DECIDED TO DOUBLE THE NUMBER OF BEST PICTURE NOMINEES
(June 24, 2009)

You can thank "Dreamgirls" director Bill Condon and producer Laurence Mark for this morning's announcement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science that the best picture category will feature 10 nominees as opposed to the traditional five.

The rule change took Hollywood by surprise, leaving more than a few studio honchos sputtering about rising marketing costs and the thought of having to say no to even more high-powered directors and producers whining for bigger and splashier Oscar campaigns.

According to Academy President Sid Ganis, the idea was first broached during a post-mortem between Condon and Mark, the executive producer and producer, respectively, of this year’s Oscar telecast, and the Academy Awards review committee, which oversees the ceremony.

By several accounts, review Committee Chairman Tom Sherak, the former president of Fox, picked up the ball and ran with it. “He was a major advocate” Ganis said.

Sherak’s small committee also included former New Line marketing guru Cheryl Boone-Isaacs, Steven Spielberg’s personal spokesman, Marvin Levy, director Phil Alden Robinson and cinematographer Owen Roizman. The idea was proposed to the entire Academy board at a meeting in April. Much kibitzing and more committee meetings followed until the proposal was finally voted on last night, where it won approval.

The final vote wasn’t unanimous, but Ganis wouldn't name the holdout. "This is a board of film artists. It’s often a polite but heated, intense discussion. Managing that group gets a little tough," he said, laughing. “The group gets a little rowdy.”

-- Rachel Abramowitz

-----------------------
And from Roger Ebert:

ACADEMY BOMBSHELL
Best Picture nominees increased from 5 to 10

by Roger Ebert

In a stunning surprise, the number of Best Picture nominees was increased from five to ten Wednesday by the Motion Picture Academy. No, Wednesday was not April 1.

"The Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year,” said Sid Ganis, outgoing Academy president. In 1934 and 1935 there were 12 nominees, and from 1935 to 1943 there were 10.

The announcement, which came without advance rumor, was greeted with questions, criticism, and little immediate praise. It raises the obvious questions: Will the annual Oscar telecast now routinely run even longer than four hours?

"The whole awards format has been undergoing some energetic rethinking for about three years," Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy, told me Wednesday, "but the possibility of expanding the best Picture slate began to be discussed seriously in the two regular 'breakdown' meetings following this February's broadcast. In particular the show's producers, Larry Mark and Bill Condon, expressed a regret that the BP nominations couldn't provide a better indication of the whole range of a year's best work.

"Since we don't do a special "showcase" of each BP nominee on the broadcast anymore, we don't think the change will add much at all to the show's running time."

I asked about the surprising absence of advance rumors. "We're as mystified as you are. We always ask that discussions of new ideas be kept confidential, but there's almost always a leak. This time --no leak. Amazing."

One who didn't get a leak was Nikki Finke, the widely-read blogger whose inside sources are among the best in the industry. "This is the direct result of intense lobbying by the major studios," she wrote, charging: "It's no secret that the studios have grown increasingly frustrated that their mainstream fare --the four-quadrant films, the family-oriented toons, the superhero actioners, and the high-octane thrillers--have not been able to garner enough Best Picture nods in recent years while the art house offerings of the rapidly dwindling specialty divisions and indie prods dominate the process. That, in turn, has hurt the Oscar broadcast ratings as little-seen and often little-known films compete with one another while blockbuster hits are left out of the Academy Awards show."

On the other hand, the result of the change may not be more mainstream nominees. As the number of Academy voters has grown, they have been increasingly willing to step outside the mainstream. While this would mean a highly-regarded hit like "The Dark Knight" would almost certainly be nominated, but the new "Transformers" film, which could become this year's biggest blockbuster, would have no chance even if the category grew to 20 films. Taste does remain a factor.

There will be one obvious beneficiary: The trade papers, which get pages of Oscar advertising every year. "This will be a critical -- perhaps business-saving -- moment for Variety," wrote David Poland of the influential MovieCityNews.com. He added: "I'm not crying, as a businessman, either."

What will be the consequences for the annual Oscarcast? I asked Marsha Jordan, for 25 years the producer of Oscar coverage for ABC7/Chicago. "It's great to have extra movies in play," she said, "but the competition just increases with less chance to win. The one thing the Golden Globes do well is separating genres, so that comedies and musicals have a chance. Take a year like 1994. 'Schindler's List' won the Globes for best drama. 'Mrs. Doubtfire' won for Comedy or Musical. How do you put them up against each other? That's also a long list at the end of a long show, with the finale still being a couple of geeky producers center stage."

Thinking it through, I suspect (1) more indie films will be nominated than the Academy expects; but (2) that the larger field will fragment the vote, so that the Best Picture winner will be a major studio picture. But it's almost always like that anyway. The most visible smaller pictures that won were "Chariots of Fire" (1991), "Annie Hall" (1977) and "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008).

The slumdog may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Know what? In a field of 10, I think it still would have been the winner. On the other hand, three of the other BP nominees were smaller films: "Frost/Nixon," "Milk" and "The Reader." The only big time production that made the cut was "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."




Edited By Damien on 1245914788
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Post by Big Magilla »

On the other hand, let's remember that My Man Godfrey, the first film to receive nominations in all four acting categories, as well as a best director nod, failed to make the cut for Best Picture the same year that Libeled Lady received its single nod for best picture.

My guess is that the Broadcast Film Critics nominations will become the key precursor for Oscar's best picture slate going forward.
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Post by rudeboy »

Damien wrote:It'll be interesting to see if there are any Best Picture nominees that receive no other nominations, a la Ruggles of Red Gap, Libeled Lady and The Ox-Bow Incident.
I'd say it's inevitable. Something like Gran Torino, which is 'almost there' in two or three other categories, could easily miss those but slip into the list of ten.

I'd guess we're also likely to some of those movies where the Oscar attention revolves around a single performance - Monster, The Last King of Scotland - flipped a second nod to back up their frontrunner.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Mister Tee wrote:And thinking of nominations morning: won’t they have to remake their set, to fit ten screens rather than five? And what’ll they do with the excess screens while the standard-size categories are announced? Will they leave best supporting actor/supporting actress, actor/actress up together, to fill out the picture?
They could keep the five and repopulate them for the second half of the announcement.
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Post by OscarGuy »

Of course, this is all assuming their vote tabulation method stays the same...They will probably keep it for the other categories, but it would be rather cumbersome to redesign it for Best Picture. They could just go for a plurality system or a weighted Ten-Best system. Who knows right now. I don't know that they've specified that.
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Post by The Original BJ »

I've been thinking a bit about the lone director situation a little bit today, and I have to argue that there's the possibility that trend might not disappear completely, partly because in my view there are roughly two types of lone director nominees.

The first would be from the kind of film that's in the running for a Best Picture nomination, but fails. I think those would be obvious candidates to score Best Picture nods under the ten-wide system. From this past decade, I'd definitely cite Being John Malkovich, Billy Elliot, Black Hawk Down, United 93, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

However, the directors' branch has also singled out films that weren't really in the running for Best Picture at all, yet managed to land in Best Director, sometimes by tremendous surprise. Looking at these years...

Of these types of nominees this decade, I think Mulholland Drive would be the most likely to place in the ten-wide Best Picture field, simply because it was in the race from the beginning -- those critics prizes and the Globe nominations got the ball rolling. But, as Tee said, it's sheer weirdness would still give it trouble. (Not to mention the competition: I think Black Hawk Down and Shrek would have been sure things, Amélie a good bet given its nomination haul, so at best it would have hung on amidst competition from a slew of smaller films.)

The fact that Talk to Her actually won the screenplay prize makes it seem a strong candidate, but didn't that movie really begin to build in buzz AFTER the nominations? You'd have to think Far From Heaven, About Schmidt, Adaptation, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and maybe Road to Perdition or Frida (both of which did quite well down-ballot) posed more than enough threats going into the nominations to leave Talk to Her out of the top ten completely.

I see Vera Drake along similar lines. Those twin screenplay/director nods were real coups, as it barely even seemed talked about as a Best Picture candidate. I could easily imagine five other films taking its place.

And then there's the freaky City of God situation. Apparently, it was on enough branches' radar to nab those four shocking nominations. It seems like it would have had to have been among the Academy's ten favorite films...but...the idea of such of an out-of-nowhere movie placing in Best Picture seems so shocking you'd still have to wonder. (Actually, thinking about it gets me excited about what kind of surprises we could conceivably see.)

Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's perfectly possible that those four films would have scored among the top ten. But I also don't think it's inconceivable that they could have missed, too.

Tee, poses an interesting question -- where will these new nominees come from? It SEEMS like the Directing/Writing contenders would make the most sense to fill out a 10-space Best Picture lineup, especially since those often contain films we think of as Best Picture just-misses. But one also wonders if films with strong tech credentials previously unconsidered for Best Picture -- Pirates of the Caribbean, Memoirs of a Geisha, Frida, The Matrix -- will prove more powerful than we might have thought.
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Post by Mister Tee »

More thoughts provoked by this startling rule change:

I wonder if we’ll start thinking of the announcement of the five best director nominees as the key moment on nominations morning. Yes, there’ll be one or two in that group that, under the time-honored system, would have been just lone director candidates (and for at least a few years, I imagine we obsessives will try to weigh which one(s). But, by and large -- assuming the long-ago past is prologue – the true candidates for best picture should be among those five. Reading the best picture nominees might be anti-climactic.

And thinking of nominations morning: won’t they have to remake their set, to fit ten screens rather than five? And what’ll they do with the excess screens while the standard-size categories are announced? Will they leave best supporting actor/supporting actress, actor/actress up together, to fill out the picture?

The precedents for how this new system will play out are quite limited. There were more best pictures than best directors in most years prior to 1944, but for this exact numerical split – 10 and 5 – only the 8-year stretch from 1936 through 1943 applies. And we should be careful of drawing too many inferences from that period due to seriously different circumstances – extras and guilds were often voting, not just an elite group, and, of course, that the whole era was one of studio near-hegemony. Had we similar samples from the 40s – when writers started singling out foreign efforts – or the 90s, when indies took over, we’d be working from a far stronger base of knowledge.

But we know this: it will now take a far smaller core group of fans to get a film onto the best picture slate. Assume an Academy membership of about 6000. The accountants, in interviews describing the byzantine nomination process, say they divide this total by five (for the available slots) + 1 – dws would undoubtedly understand this better than I, but apparently it’s a mathematically sound procedure. Any film that reached that threshold number in first place votes – that is to say, 1000 – would instantly be designated a best picture nominee. Forget the rest of the process a moment, and focus on this big change under the new system: now you’re dividing by 10+1, 11 – which means a film need only get c. 550 first place votes to qualify. That’s not nothing, but it’s a significantly lower bar, and one that, it seems to me, films like recent controversial omittees Wall E and Dark Knight might well have topped.

The question is, what films are most likely to grab these newly available slots? I’m guessing the folks who lobbied for this rule envision unserious but respected commercial hits stepping in – Spider Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, anything by Pixar – and figure the rest of the spots will be taken by second-tier best picture hopefuls – things like Doubt or Cold Mountain. But what’s intriguing is how far off the beam voters might go in either direction: Might they not only have nominated the first Pirates (I’d say a good bet); could they have sucked up to the box-office gods and gone with Dead Man’s Chest as well? At the other end…will films with serious cult devotion have enough support to now weigh in as best picture nominees? What sort of level of support in the lower-echelon categories will be needed? I saw someone at another site today suggest Zodiac might have made the list, but, much as I love the film, it got zero nominations – not even the writers backed it – and I think such films are still unlikely to make a run. (As far as I can see, only four films got such freakish nods during the ’36-’43 period – Libeled Lady, Grand Illusion, One Foot in Heaven and The Ox-Bow Incident) But what about films like Children of Men, Away from Her, Far from Heaven, Adaptation – films that scored for writing and/or acting/editing? Will they now be where enough voters go for their ballot-fillers?

I’m guessing previous lone director candidates will almost all score best picture nods; during that period ’36-’43, only My Man Godfrey and Angels with Dirty Faces among director nominees failed to do so. It will be interesting to see if the directors’ branch love of foreigners means we get a bunch of overseas best picture nominees. And, as Oscar Guy said earlier, there’s a very good chance animated films will become a major factor.

One more thing: I’m guessing the era of the NY and LA critics’ best picture winners failing to get nominated will now mostly end. It might still be difficult for a Mulholland Drive to make the list, but grey-area films like The Player, Leaving Las Vegas and Far from Heaven are far more likely to make a group of ten than they were as one of five.
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Post by anonymous1980 »

OscarGuy wrote:I think the one genre that still will get no Academy respect is horror...it's the red-headed step-child of the Oscars...
Many consider The Silence of the Lambs a horror film.
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Post by Zahveed »

I just thought I would get a word in.
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Post by Okri »

Penelope wrote:Conversely, this might spur the critics to think even further outside the box when handing out their awards; not just Up and Star Trek are currently earning raves, but so are films as diverse as Drag Me to Hell, The Hurt Locker and Summer Hours. I'd especially love to see the latter make Oscar 10 nominees.

That would be awesome. Won't happen (I'm pretty sure it's ineligible), but it would be awesome.

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Post by FilmFan720 »

Can we just call this The Dark Knight rule?
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Post by Heksagon »

A desperate way to increase television ratings. If the members of the Academy will not vote major nominations for popular films, then the Academy's board of directors will change the rules so that the popular films will get major nominations anyway.

Obviously, it will decrease the value of getting a best picture nomination. We'll see what that means. Maybe people will just lose interest when there will be so many films with a nomination.
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