CONGRATULATIONS - YOU SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED

Every year when the Oscar nominations roll around, there is almost always a “wild card” nominee in the Best Picture category. We’re all familiar with the wild card – that pitiful film just marginally special enough to have made the rank with the other, more deserving four. That one hundred-to-one shot people in Vegas will put a few bucks on “just for fun.” The director of this film will walk down the red carpet the night of the awards ceremony cloaked in shame. He is the one who continues to tell reporters along the carpet, “it’s such an honor to be recognized in this category.” He knows it. The reporters know it. The viewers at home are laughing about it. His film is good – really good. But there’s not a snowball’s chance in you-know-where that he’ll return home with Oscar gold.

Thanks to the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010’s Oscar ceremony will not bring us just one of these unfortunate Best Picture nominees, but six. Last summer, the academy’s president (Sidney Ganis) announced they would be “casting (the) net wide,” in an attempt to include films more widely seen.”

So rarely do movie-going audiences get the chance to see all films up for Oscars. Unless you live in New York, Los Angeles, or a major city with theatre houses owned by people who don’t mind risking showing An Education over James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar, you probably won’t get the opportunity to see some films in the theatre. Because the academy wants the Oscar telecast to remain in the top 2 Neilson spots (television rankings, folks) with the Super Bowl, they’re going to widen the Best Picture category. No one can dispute that some films are just better than others. Because you can’t simply eliminate the best, broaden the category to include the mediocre.

There were four films this year we could count on to be voted into the Best Picture category: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Bastards, and Up in the Air. Each year, the members of the academy vote for two categories: their own (if you’re registered as a “director,” you vote for Best Director, and so on) and for Best Picture. Members cast their ballots for Best Picture listing up to five names, ranked in order of preference.

This year, it’s as if we get to see the five or six films ranked last on those ballots. How embarrassing for The Blind Side. How exhilarating for Jonas Rivera (Up’s producer) to remain in his seat for this category after winning Best Animated Feature. I’m sure Peter Jackson and the Cohen Brothers won’t be writing acceptance speeches, their movies having won in recent years.

Ganis wanted to make sure that people watching the Oscar telecast felt included – that they had seen some of the films nominated in the Best Picture category. Ironic that the category is being widened in a year where there are probably only a handful of folks on this planet who haven’t seen (Avatar) the movie that will win in this category. Thank you, academy. Problem solved.

-Hillary Smotherman