I’m proud to present our latest Celebrity Guest, Thomas J. Allen, Executive Director of the National Academy of Video Game Testers and Reviewers (NAViGaTR). My first collaboration with Tom was back in 2005, an article on Quality of Life in the games industry, eventually (after after 18 months and 21 drafts) published in Develop Magazine across the pond in Europe. Tom and I have since appeared together on industry panels, collaborated on other articles like this one, and generally created our own brand of trouble. Tom is one of those people with 10-12 wild schemes cooking at once, and I’ve managed to participate in a few of them without losing my life or spotless criminal record.
One of Tom’s many passions is film, so today he presents us with a rumination on what the last few years might have been like had the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which so recently announced that it was switching to ten nominees for Best Picture instead of five, decided to do so earlier. As with our other Celebrity Guests, Tom will hang around for a while to respond to comments. Enjoy!
Rewriting Oscar History
This June, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that, effective immediately, the Best Picture category will include 10 nominees instead of the usual five.While others may debate the merits of this move, the more exciting debate is how would history be re-written if this rule change had come earlier?
BEST PICTURE 2008
Appaloosa
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Gran Torino
Milk
Rachel Getting Married
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
The most obvious benefactor this year would have been The Dark Knight, whose support from the various technical branches was nothing short of amazing…and quite frankly overkill for Visual Effects, Makeup, and Art Direction.Make no mistake:The Dark Knight should have been nominated for Picture, Director, and Screenplay.
WALL-E’s snub also showed that animated features would only score a Best Picture nomination in a mediocre year.With 10 nominations now the norm, we can look forward to a Pixar film being up for Best Picture every single time.
In exchange for The Dark Knight and WALL-E, the Academy gave us The Reader.This movie doesn’t know what it wants to be.Is it a legal drama?Is it a romance?Is it a WWII period piece?By design, Kate Winslet’s character is the most frustrating of all.She doesn’t learn anything, and her feelings of guilt are more intellectual than heartfelt.The Reader is nothing but an endless series of contrasts that, despite the attempt to be meaningful, do nothing but ring untrue.Lena Olin, unnecessarily playing two characters, seems to preside in Contemporary Art Direction Heaven.Her perfectly designed apartment and casually flanked sweater say only, “I’m rich.I have myself together, and nothing affects me.”No one in this picture is sympathetic or relatable.Given the subject matter, that failure is a travesty.
BEST PICTURE 2007
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Juno
The Kite Runner
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
The Savages
There Will Be Blood
Once again, given the opportunity to re-write history, the Academy could have honored two foreign language films (Diving Bell, Kite Runner) and one example of animated movie perfection (Ratatouille).
BEST PICTURE 2006
Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
Dreamgirls
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Departed
Pan’s Labyrinth
The Queen
United 93
Stopping at ten nominations would have proven extremely difficult in 2006.Also in consideration for the tenth slot would have been films like An Inconvenient Truth, Thank You for Smoking, The Last King of Scotland, The Fountain, The Illusionist, and The Prestige.
BEST PICTURE 2005
Batman Begins
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
The Constant Gardner
Crash
Good Night and Good Luck
A History of Violence
Munich
Pride & Prejudice
Walk the Line
In 2005, the top ten would have almost certainly looked exactly like this, though the list would be much sweeter with Howl’s Moving Castle.
BEST PICTURE 2004
The Aviator
Closer
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Finding Neverland
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The Incredibles
Million Dollar Baby
The Notebook
Ray
Sideways
Lastly, 2004 would have been a tricky year for the Academy.Given the murky choices of highbrow fare (Hotel Rwanda, The Sea Inside, Vera Drake), moderately supported sleepers (The Chorus, The Village, Maria Full of Grace), and tepidly supported sex and Jesus movies (Kinsey, Passion of the Christ), voters might have been more comfortable with the box office glory of Harry Potter, The Incredibles, and The Notebook.
Five years of ten nominees.Would it have been worth it?One thing is certain: diversity would have been unavoidable.If this retrospective is any indication, we will now start to see Best Picture nominees that no one in his or her right mind would dare seriously suggest in the past.
Ten nominations for Best Picture is actually a return to Academy tradition, with 1939 being the most noteworthy year.However, voters won’t find it any easier to fill their slots.Consider the bottom five slots in 2007.You have six realistic contenders.Which would you sacrifice?
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Ratatouille
The Savages
The Kite Runner
Now that’s a Sophie’s Choice.
Also for 2006… Little Children, which hopefully would have edged out Dreamgirls again.
Somehow The Kite Runner got chopped off the list of six in the last paragraph. No I’m not willing to sacrifice it!
Sorry Tommy, my bad. It’s all fixed now. If you must sacrifice something I’d go with The Bourne Ultimatum. That movie was crap with a capital AP.
I agree that it’s the one I’d cut, but it’s the rare action movie I thought was excellent. My aunt was shocked it was on my list. While you’re at, Sakey, you might as well fix “Gran Torino Milk.” That would take some heavy pasteurization.
That last scene with Lena Olin in the The Reader was just ridiculous. The penthouse setting just came out of nowhere, had no place in the film and was little more than a distraction. I agree, the last act of The Reader just spun its wheels and never did gain traction. For my money the most lucid film on the 2008 list was Frost/Nixon, followed closely by Wall-E.
Interesting take. I think the idea of expanding the field to 10 pictures is a good idea. I think it will give a wider range of films more exposures, which, usually, is a good thing. People tend to want to go and see pictures that are nominated, so, the more the better.
It will also allow the Academy to start recognizing some genres that have long been forgotten in this field, say, like, comedies for example.