Oscars aim to ramp up interest with 10 best-picture picks

But it doesn't make much difference, because the real race is between Avatar and The Hurt Locker

It was announced last year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that there would be 10 nominees for the best picture Oscar in 2010, an increase from the usual five.
This has happened before, the last time in 1943, when Casablanca won the Academy Award. The idea was that the expanded list would bring in pictures that traditionally are not nominated, but that seem worthy in some way.
Not your typical art films, maybe, but movies such as The Dark Knight, the well-received (and lucrative) 2008 film that won Heath Ledger a posthumous Oscar but didn't make it into the big list itself. The new list of 10 would solve that problem, and restore public interest in the Oscars.
Well, the Oscar nominations are out and no one is satisfied. Some people are put off because the Dark Knights of 2009 -- movies such as Star Trek -- are not on the list.
Others are outraged that the Dark Knight pretenders -- things such as The Blind Side -- did.
If the problem with the Oscars was that they honoured critical darlings that the public didn't see, the solution was simply to throw in yet more critical darlings that even fewer people saw, spiced with a populist hit that is regarded by the cognoscenti as a shameless piece of emotional manipulation.
It really doesn't make much difference, because the real Oscar race is between Avatar, the champion of the big-budget blockbuster faction, and The Hurt Locker, the gritty little war drama that represents the indie spirit of filmmaking.
The other films are long shots, although I'm told it's an honour to be included and the nomination may help the box-office returns: that little Oscar symbol on the ads can sell tickets, even when the nominee turns out to be, say, Transformers 2 (up for best sound mixing.)
If Oscar had chosen to pick the traditional five movies this year, they most likely would have been Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire, and Up in the Air, all fine movies that were successful in that they found their audiences, became part of the public conversation, and did well at the box office.
The exception is The Hurt Locker, which made only $16 million US, but that number will increase with DVD sales now that Oscar has come calling: it represents the little art film that always manages to make it onto the list and, occasionally, score an upset.
The additions to the nominee list are where the contention comes in. The Blind Side is a crowd-pleaser of big, obvious emotions: it's based on a true story, but it feels like truth tweaked into Hollywood reality. The Blind Side represents a kind of middle-of-the-road moviemaking that doesn't warrant the special attention of a best picture award, and it's not much of a consolation that worse movies have won.
If the list was expanded to accommodate the likes of this, it hardly seems worthwhile.
On the other hand the expanded list also found room for District 9, an ingenious sci-fi film with great special effects, despite a modest budget, and a fascinating idea: that aliens landing in South Africa would be imprisoned in large camps, not dissimilar to the black population under apartheid. The movie did surprisingly well at the box office -- domestic grosses were $115 million -- but was the kind of film that would have been ignored in previous years ( Avatar having snatched up the sci-fi slot), motivating many think pieces about Hollywood's lack of creative imagination. District 9 won't win, but that it has been acknowledged is a step in restoring the credibility of Oscar.
Two other nominees -- An Education and A Serious Man -- are also wonderful movies that flew well under the radar last year (their domestic take was $8 million and $9 million respectively) but are both worth seeing. Awarding them with Oscar nominations is a worthy honour.
There's a feeling in the air that they were thrown in because the academy was running out of candidates, but remember that both Invictus and Nine were snubbed in the best picture race. This is an encouraging sign of good taste: An Education and A Serious Man are unusual and edgy films that pulse with dark energy, while Invictus and Nine -- while both were made with a good deal of care -- feel old-fashioned and stodgy.
That leaves Up, a fine animated movie that nonetheless does seem to have been added to complete the list of 10.
Up was also nominated for best animated movie, a case of double-dipping that theoretically could give the movie two Oscars. Up is one of those films that deserves to migrate out of its specialty category, but if it was going to be there, it could have been left off the best picture list and the slot could have gone elsewhere.
There's a substantial constituency that would have cheered for the lewd and funny comedy The Hangover, which was too sloppy to qualify for a best picture nomination but at least would have sent the message that in the new Hollywood, goofy entertainment is worth something.