a blue alien in Avatar.
Twentieth Century Fox

'Avatar' is 162 minutes long. We know one company that might not be rooting for it.

As you may recall, I attended last February's Gigantic Endless Paralyzing But Oddly Awesome Marathon Of Best Picture Nominees (not its official name) and covered it on our Twitter feed. As soon as I heard that there would be ten Best Picture nominees this year, I wondered: Will my spine be robbed of the opportunity to be crushed because there's simply no way to watch ten straight movies, or is there someone who thinks you can watch ten straight movies?

I decided to go right to the source: AMC Theaters, which ran the Best Picture Showcase last year. I asked them: Do ten nominees kill your event?

AMC explains, after the jump.

 

AMC spokesperson Andy DiOrio told me that they're definitely looking to continue the showcase — and even that being stuck with ten nominees to present is a "unique opportunity" — but that they're still considering "the optimal way to position the ten films for 2010." They don't expect to make a formal announcement as to the structure until they actually see what the ten films are; I suspect they're hoping for lots of nominees like the 96-minute Up and not too many like the 162-minute Avatar.

For now, they seem to be committed to finding a way, but keeping their options open. Two consecutive days? Two consecutive Saturdays? Two per night for a Monday-Friday week? No idea. When you've got ten movies to consider and solidly an hour's worth of swing between short movies and long movies, that's theoretically a ten-hour swing in total running time, so you can maybe see why they're holding out for the actual nominees.

Still, I hope it continues, myself, in some form. I think I'd vote for a two-straight-day plan. Last year, there was something about the compactness and cheerfully grueling nature of the thing that I kind of enjoyed. It was like a cross between an amusement park and a minimum-security prison with popcorn.

If you were following us back then, you probably recall my gradual progression from cheerful optimism to cross-eyed exhaustion, but I was glad I did it. Seeing them all together made Frost/Nixon look really lightweight and made Slumdog Millionaire and Milk look really good. (Benjamin Button was still really too long and The Reader was still wildly not as good as the other ones.)

That kind of concentrated dose really helped me compare performances and avoid some of the automatic tendency to favor the thing you saw most recently or with the most pleasant company. Could I do that two days in a row? Perhaps we'll find out.