A nice benefit of the expanded Best Picture category (10 Best Pic noms instead of the usual 5) is that a few films outside the customary fall/Christmas prestige releases made it into the mix this year. Up came out this past May, The Hurt Locker in June, and District 9 and Inglourious Basterds in August. The five extra slots forced Academy voters to actually look back to the fog-shrouded past of five or six months ago for a few of their selections!
Also, release date aside, there never would have been room for a serious, tough-minded science-fiction thriller like District 9 before, outside of the technical categories. Yet there it is competing for a Best Picture Oscar!
I think the experiment with an expanded Best Picture category has been a success: there are the usual end-of-year prestige entries (actually, there's now room for a couple more of them), a few mid-year selections, a couple of unexpected picks (District 9 and The Blind Side, the latter previously expected to deliver only a Best Actress nomination to Sandra Bullock), and no outright clunkers.
This should all make for a more engaging Oscarcast on Sunday, March 7.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment