The governors of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences voted Tuesday to shake up the Best Picture competition at the 84th Academy Awards.
According to the new system, anywhere between five and 10 films can be nominated for Best Picture. To add to the suspense, the Academy won’t reveal the exact number of Best Picture nominees until January’s nomination announcement.
This is the second major change to the Best Picture category in recent years. In 2009, the Academy announced that the category would expand from five nominees — a number that had been in place since 1944 — to 10 nominees.
The newest change will require nominated films to earn at least 5% of first place votes in order to contend for Best Picture. That means that a film must appear as a first place choice on at least 5% of ballots. This percentage was determined by looking back at past Oscar ballot data.
“In studying the data, what stood out was that Academy members had regularly shown a strong admiration for more than five movies. A Best Picture nomination should be an indication of extraordinary merit,” said Executive Director Bruce Davis in a statement from the Academy. “If there are only eight pictures that truly earn that honor in a given year, we shouldn’t feel an obligation to round out the number.”
Davis’s statement speaks to the biggest criticism in the wake of the 2009 rules change. The expansion of Best Picture as a category can largely be attributed to the omission of critical and commercial hits like WALL-E andThe Dark Knight from the list of nominees. The Academy hoped that expanding the competition to more films would lead to a more diverse representation of genres.
In practice, things didn’t quite work out that way. In a particularly strong year for film like 2008, 10 nominees would make sense. But some critics felt the Best Picture category was padded by its 2009 and 2010 nominees, which included films like The Blind Side, District 9 and Toy Story 3.
Like Pete Hammond at Deadline, we think the new changes make a lot of sense. By focusing on quality rather than quantity, the Academy should be able to put together a better show.
As the Academy works hard to modernize Oscar, it’s nice that it hasn’t lost sight of the real purpose of the awards: film. All the technology and social interaction in the world can’t make a subpar list of nominees more interesting to fans and viewers.
What do you think of the Oscar nomination changes?
Posting Source: http://mashable.com/2011/06/15/oscar-best-picture-changes/
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