The Oscars: Are 10 Best Picture Noms Helping Or Hurting Films?

Well, it’s the time of the year that all cinephiles love – Oscar season. While the football fans have their Super Bowl and the baseball fans have their World Series (is that right?), us film viewers have our Oscars, the cinematic culmination of the year.
The Hurt Locker and Avatar were most popular at the nominations which were announced Feb. 2 at 7:30 AM. Both films scored a noteworthy nine nominations. People have compared the battle between the to films to that of David & Goliath, an underdog versus a bohemoth.
What’s particularly impressive is how much smaller in size The Hurt Locker is to the bombastic Avatar, which, costing $230 million in production budgets, reaching a record $2.1 billion (and still counting), became the highest grossing film of all time this week – whereas The Hurt Locker cost a meager $16 million to make (if you saw the movie, you’d see how Bigelow and folks stretched a dollar), and made a very marginal fraction of what Avatar made.
Put it this way: it’s doubtful that anyone outside of New York or Los Angeles saw The Hurt Locker, and we can credit the hype and momentum it has received to the mass appreciation from the critics.
What makes this Academy Awards show so special is the reinstatement of the Best Picture category. Now, instead of five, they are including ten nominations for the category. While there is no definitive answer to why the Academy made this decision, the most logical one is that the ratings for the past few years have been considerably down and viewership has steadily decreased, so if more movies fill up the categories, more people are likely to watch.
I have mixed feelings about the decision. Yes, it’s nice that more films are getting nominated. It’s wondrous that Up flew its way into a nomination for Best Picture, along with the Coens’ obscure but incredibly well-crafted A Serious Man.
But here is the downside: a film like The Blind Side gets nominated when there’s no way in hell it’s going to win, unless an upset occurs. Is getting a nomination for Best Picture an achievement anymore if ten films are nominated in the category?
And here’s another thing – yes, there are ten nominations now, but still, there are really only five contenders. The competition is quite clearly between The Hurt Locker and Avatar, but if it doesn’t go to one of those two, it’ll go to either the overshadowed Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which scored eight nominations (three to Tarantino himself), Lee Daniel’s over-done but brilliantly acted tour-de-force Precious, or Reitman’s swift and timely mood piece Up in the Air.
What do these five films have in common? Their directors were all nominated in the Best Director category. That being said, it’s quite clear by now that these five films are where the real competition lies. You’d be hard pressed to find A Serious Man, Up, The Blind Side, An Education, or District 9 take center stage that night.
On the other hand, it’s nice enough that some indie films were able to get this kind of recognition. I for one, am very glad that District 9 is up there in the ten, as it was a very creative, edgy, original sci-fi noir.
I’m not against ten nominations – in fact, I think it’s a smart way for the ceremony to reach more people. Just don’t go thinking that all ten of these films are equally qualified to win.