In June, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) – the body that awards Oscars – announced that, starting in 2010, there will be a total of ten nominees in the Best Picture category. This is the first time the category will feature more than five nominees since the 1943 awards, which Casablanca won. And later on in August, AMPAS announced a new preferential voting system for the category – due to the fact that, in theory, a film could win by obtaining a mere 10.1% of votes. This works out as something like 500-600 people; a pool too small to be picking the Best Picture.

The reasoning behind this is very clear, and stems largely from the criticism AMPAS has attracted – particularly in recent years – for the limited range of films they tend to nominate in this category. I got in on the act myself with my July 2006 Feature – 'Where Awards Go'. That was the Feature in which I coined the phrase 'safe dramas' – a simple term which nonetheless describes the vast majority of Best Picture nominees. So they probably think they have placated complainers like me with this decision – but nothing could be further from the truth. I honestly think they couldn't have responded to the criticism in a less appropriate way.

To kick things off, having ten nominees will – unless they do something really drastic – make the ceremony itself longer. At the very least, it will add something like 20 minutes to a broadcast the vast majority of people already consider to be too lengthy and indulgent. Remember, the standard format for the Best Picture category is to give each nominee its own 2 or 3-minute segment, with them spread out throughout the broadcast. I'm not actually someone who finds the length to be a problem, but with this decision AMPAS has shown that little criticism of this aspect has been taken aboard.

But I think the biggest problem is that AMPAS are clearly of the opinion that doing this will stop criticism of the sort of films they nominate, because it could actually make the problem worse. This year is actually quite useful for demonstrating the logic behind their thinking. We had two Best Supporting Actor nominees – Robert Downey Jr. and Heath Ledger – in two films – Tropic Thunder and The Dark Knight – which were nominated for nothing else but technical awards. Ledger, of course, went on to win the Oscar. Both these films were popular and critically lauded, and yet neither appeared in the list of Best Picture nominees. And the problem is that, even if there had been ten places up for grabs last year, could it really be said with confidence that either of them would have fared any better? AMPAS haven't created a way for excellent films in more unusual genres to be nominated; but rather a way for five more safe dramas to be nominated.

What AMPAS has done is attempt to engineer a solution to a problem that is impossible to fix by traditional means. As it stands, this new system will most likely see more of the same nominated more of the time, but their hands have been tied by the option they chose. Had they, for example, specified that a certain number of these additional nominees had to come from certain genres, there would be all sorts of problems. Films would be made within very narrow parameters, purely to ensure they occupied that particular genre's slot. Also, it would be difficult to settle on what those genres would be, and there would almost certainly be years when total cack got nominated purely because of the type of film it was. The real solution to this problem was to realise that the way AMPAS membership works makes it much harder for younger and less conventional film-makers to gain the opportunity to vote.

So I really don't think AMPAS have done themselves any favours with this decision. In legitimately good years it will seem like less of a problem, but it will be during the years when the traditional Hollywood output somewhat sucks that the flaws will become really apparent. To be fair, this year all the Best Picture nominees were legitimately good films that weren't particularly controversial picks. But that doesn't happen every year, and a dirge of drippy Hollywood dramas and mawkish tosh being nominated – at the expense of more novel and nontraditional films – would spell disaster for AMPAS's already somewhat frail reputation.

And perhaps above all, doesn't having ten Best Picture nominees cheapen the Oscars a little bit? Whether films go on to win anything or not, nominations are slapped on posters, DVD cases and adverts quicker than you'd think would be humanly possible. Not to mention the fact that it would put the Oscars out of sync with pretty much every major award out there – five nominees being the norm for, among many others, the BAFTAs, the SAG Awards and even the Golden Globes - which tend to have five in each of its two categories. A Best Picture nomination should be a sign of quality, and a prestigious honour conferred on the best films each year. But if you knew that some films had only received the distinction to make up the numbers, the glamour and magic would certainly seem a little tarnished.

© David Mercier
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