a hand holding an Oscar statuette The Oscars: If the ceremony isn't long enough for you, it's about to get a little longer. David Livingston/Getty Images
 

by Linda Holmes

Great news for people who want to stay up even later on Oscar night: this year, there will be ten nominees for Best Picture instead of five.

It's hard to figure out what this is supposed to accomplish, other than perpetuating the "more of everything" attitude that seems to be prevalent nearly everywhere. To some people, it's going to devalue being nominated -- which is kind of silly, unless you presume there to be something magical about five movies rather than ten.

The most obvious beneficiary is Up. Animated movies are historically the subjects of much speculation about their nomination-worthiness anyway. And while it might have been plausible to find five movies better than Up, but they're going to have a tough time finding ten.

It will also be interesting to see whether this allows one or two giant crowd-pleasers that got great reviews but would normally never make it to an awards ceremony -- maybe even something like The Hangover, for instance -- to get nominations they could never have gotten in the past. (It seems like it would almost certainly have had this effect for The Dark Knight last year.)

What it will do for sure is inflate the hoopla surrounding the Best Picture race, and unless they're going to ignore some of the nominees, it's going to make the show even more endless than it already is.

And what of the annual events where they show all the nominees in one day? What about the people who try to see every Best Picture nominee, but may give up if the list doubles in length? How, precisely, this will play out remains to be seen, but the rationale for it is not immediately obvious.

categories: Movies

2:54 - June 24, 2009

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