Best Picture
- “Avatar” James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers
- “The Blind Side” Nominees to be determined
- “District 9” Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham, Producers
- “An Education” Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey, Producers
- “The Hurt Locker” Nominees to be determined
- “Inglourious Basterds” Lawrence Bender, Producer
- “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness, Producers
- “A Serious Man” Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Producers
- “Up” Jonas Rivera, Producer
- “Up in the Air” Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman, Producers
So this is what 10 nominees for Best Picture look like.
On the one hand, it’s great to see Up on the list. After Beauty and Beast was nominated, the creation of a special animated section has kept some great films off the best picture list. With just 5 nominees, we probably wouldn’t see it there.
Furthermore, it’s nice to see some of best mainstream movies contend with the art films. Dark Knight should have been in the top 5 last year, but it was certainly in the top 10, had the Academy recognized that many last year. We’ve had too many art-film only Academy Awards. Not sure if that says something about the quality of the mainstream movies, or something about how people game the system.
On the other hand, this feels like a lot of just “pretty good” films. True, I often think that when there are just 5 films on the list. But 10 muddies it up even more and it disguises that there are true gems on the list.