Ok took a slight break from my GI Joe/Transformer threading and just saw this:

Damn. 10 just seems like a lot. So now we will have 9 movies to bitch about getting shafted instead of 4.

I'm not sure I understand the benefit of this. Five nominees or ten, there's still just the one winner. Given that plenty of other movies have always been nominated, just not receiving enough votes to make it to the final five, I'm not sure that I see where this will affect anything substantial. What this means is that, to set up an additional five clips during the presentation of the award, they've decided to drop one of the brief segments elsewhere. It also means that five more movies will be able to slap "Academy Award Nominee for Best Picture" on their DVD and Blu Ray releases. Great for marketing, unless the kind of people who are impressed by that kind of thing feel like it's diluted.

Well it gives the voters more options, so it could actually make a difference on what gets best picture.

And fuck some of the other catagories.. good job! Bad enough they lessened the number of contenders from 5 to 3 in the Best Visual Effects catagory over the years. Heck, one year it was only 2... AND THE FUCKING TALKING PIG WON?!

How about upping it to 5 nominees for Best Animated Feature? Or Best Make Up? or Best Original Song?

This is crap, pure and simple. Just another reason to studios to slap the "Nominated for Best Picture" tag on more mainstream films.

While part of me likes the idea that great films such as The Dark Knight will have a better shot at a Best Picture nod(even if this move is a year too late), overall I wish they'd left it at 5 nominees. Imagine how much longer the telecast will be when they have to show clips from an additional 5 movies.

I'm guessing this is due to the outrage of The Dark Knight being screwed last year.

They may have trouble finding 10 good movies in a one year timeframe....

Yeah, but they actually made enough good movies back then to justify that many nominees.

I honestly haven's seen a single movie yet this year that's worthy of a statue. Then again, I thought all 5 nominees last year were mediocre and Slumdog's sweep was a travesty. I guess we'll see what happens.

Money.

Yep.

I can't wait until the year (this?) that they can't justifiably fill 10 slots without opening themselves up to ridicule.

I hope this means better movies getting Best Picture nominations. Lately, the Academy Awards have been a total joke.

In part. I'm sure it's because the more diverse the field of nominees is, the better they figure the ratings will be. Very few people gave a crap about any of the Best Picture nominees this past year.

If they allow 10 nominees for Best Picture, then it should only be fair that they also allow 10 nominees for the major awards like acting, screenplay, editing, & directing.

But then this would mean the awards show would be more than 10 hours.

Exactly what I was thinking. Not a fan of this stunt.

This is out of the blue. I don't think anyone had even heard a whisper of this being floated around as a possibility. I agree with others that it's mostly a move to benefit marketing and ratings.

It's great that movies like The Dark Knight and Wall-E will be able to make it in (and you can now safely bet your house that Up will be Pixar's first Best Picture-nominated film, especially given this year's overall pickings), but it also means that plenty of ridicule-worthy titles will make it in as well. But then, how's that different from the usual? How can there possibly be a worse slate of BP nominees than this year's?

This

Hmm I wonder besides TDK what wouldve made up the list of 10 this year.

Too many! 6 or even 8 I can see, but 10? Yeesh.

Wait until you see next years DVDs and Blu-rays of films like The Soloist with the Best Picture Nominee plastered all over it. It was 4 films before, now it will be 9 with that ugly crap on its artwork.

Every movie in early '10 will have a "Best Picture Nominee" label.

Lost most of my respect for the Oscars once they gave "Crash" best picture. Just imo.

Clearly they're anticipating the big Oscar push for Star Trek.