Wednesday 15 June 2011

Oscars Confuse The World But Do They Confuse It Enough For It To Care?


The Wrap website reports that the Academy Awards may change the number of films nominated for Best Picture at its award ceremony every year. Do you actually care anymore?

What does it matter if there are 15 nominees a year? It may make more people see a film but the winner can be a frontrunner from the start.

"Two years after expanding the field of Best Picture nominees from five to 10, the Academy's Board of Governors threw the category into deliberate disarray on Tuesday night, instituting new rules that could lead to a different number of nominees each year," The Wrap wrote.

The change was recommended by retiring executive director Bruce Davis. It will require that a film receive at least five percent of the first-place votes during the first round of balloting to receive a Best Picture nomination.

"A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers determined that if the rule had been in effect between 2001 and 2008 (before the move to 10 nominations) it would have resulted in years of five, six, seven, eight and nine nominees," The Wrap addded.

At Tuesday night's meeting, the Board of Governors made a few other changes to Oscar rules.

Theese included that the Best Animated Feature category, which formerly had five nominees if more than 16 qualifying films were released, and only had three if the field was smaller than that, now includes a provision for four nominees in a year in which 13 to 15 films qualify.

This may sound boring but if this new rule had been in effect last year, four rather than three films would have been nominated.

The qualifying period for Documentary Feature and Documentary Short categories has been changed to be the calendar year, as is the case in almost all the other categories.

To make the adjustment, those categories will cover a full 15 months of eligible films at the next Oscars.

"One change the governors did not make was to add an Oscar for stunt work, which has been proposed repeatedly over the years, and always voted down," the Wrap said.

Alistair Anderson

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