BROWSE
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It was recently announced that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided to expand the nominated films in the best picture category from five to ten. President Sid Ganis stated that this decision does not correlate to last year’s snubbing of such critical and popular films like Wall•E and The Dark Knight. Ganis insists that this decision was made in order to return the Oscar ceremony to its early roots.

Perhaps they should have gone all the way back to nineteen twenty nine, when there were three films nominated for best picture and three films nominated for best unique and artistic picture. F.W. Murnau’s expressionistic masterpiece Sunrise won the latter award. Apparently it met some criteria of being arty by using projection screens and innovative use of title cards, but wasn’t good enough to compete with best picture winner Wings. Needless to say the once popular Wings is now so aged and inauthentic in its representation of human emotions that it’s rather unbearable to watch. So you get three standard fan favorite films for best picture. Films like The Dark Knight and Titanic fill out this category. Then you get three art films for the other award. Films like Synecdoche, New York and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford make up this category. Everyone is satisfied. The mass market movie audience gets their award and the cinephiles get theirs. Unfortunately in nineteen twenty nine winners were announced in advance. There’s so little suspense in the awards as it is, why spoil who wins best art direction.

Instead the academy could go back to the second year of the ceremony, nineteen thirty. The Great Depression had just occurred sixth months beforee, so it would be rather prescient to return to this form. Now this was the only year where only winners were announced. Who needs nominees anyway? This would prevent lobbying from the major studios along with their over-extended marketing campaigns. The telecast ratings would skyrocket. It would be the most star-studded event in Oscar history. Everyone would be there, because anyone might win. Hell, I’ll go. I might be nominated. Perhaps the academy got hold of that student film I starred in. I played a mute bi-sexual in a future world where true love is forbidden. They didn’t announce the nominees, so you never know. And I’d kick myself if I ended up winning and didn’t attend. Stranger things have happened. If Marisa Tomei can win for My Cousin Vinny then anything can happen. Then again, under that system The Broadway Melody won. Remember that musical? I didn’t think so.

Okay, how about nineteen thirty-one and thirty-two, when there were five nominees. Yes, there were five nominees before there were ten, Mr. Ganis. Perhaps you missed that day of Academy president training when you were producing Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo. Only in nineteen thirty-three did the Oscars expand the list of nominated films to ten. Then in nineteen forty-two it was shorted back to five. Perhaps that year’s president wanted to return to the Academy’s roots.

Whatever Sid Ganis would like the movie going public to believe, this decision is made with wholly populist intentions. The Dark Knight was not nominated; ratings were slightly up from two thousand seven’s record low, but nowhere near nineteen ninety-seven when Titanic received eleven awards. Unfortunately for Mr. Ganis, I believe that this will allow for even more smaller films to be nominated for best picture, and perhaps even some foreign films.

I admit that the Oscars are rather silly to begin with, but I’m sucked into the freak show every year. Its harmless fun, so I don’t see the expansion as sacrilegious, just making the freak show freakier.

-Jason Bardin