The Producers Guild Awards, long seen as a fairly accurate predictor of Oscar nominees and winners, announced today that it’s also increasing its Best Picture crop from five to 10 films. The very sharp PGA president, Marshall Herskovitz (a former exec producer of Once and Again and thirtysomething), explained that the change “support[s] our colleagues at the Academy, but also…better represents the unprecedented diversity of films being produced today.” I have tons of respect for everyone involved with the PGA Awards (I attended last year and thought it was a terrific show), but I’ve got to say, I was hoping this wouldn’t happen. With the Academy’s decision to have the same number of Best Picture slots as the Golden Globes, Broadcast Critics’ awards, National Board of Review, and AFI Awards, the PGA was left as the only major group that could still be more exclusive in choosing its nominees. Particularly because it’s looking like it may be a stretch to find 10 worthy films from this year’s slate. If the DGA or SAG awards follow suit and add nominees to their ballots, then I’m really going to be sad.
Sep 21
2009
02:35 PM ET
Producers Guild to have 10 Best Picture nominees
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I disagree, I’d say there are definitely 10 or more films this year that would deserve a Best Picture nomination – especially if the buzz is to be believed about the ones that haven’t been released yet.
Up
The Hurt Locker
Bright Star
Precious
An Education
Up in the Air
A Single Man
A Serious Man
Invictus
Avatar
The Lovely Bones
Nine
Amelia
Vomit.
I wonder if District 9 has a chance in this race?
I think expanding to 10 was a horrible idea, in the case of both the Academy Awards and Producers Guild. Personally, I feel that it cheapens it for the nominees. Before, you knew you were seeing the best of the best, and now you might be looking at 7 of the best and 3 others thrown in there to take up space. I loved The Dark Knight and Wall-E as much as the next person last year, and was bummed they didn’t get noms, but expanding to ten nominees is just not the answer. Bill Condon, I blame you!
I think there’s plenty of principled opposition to this idea, but the notion that one knew they were looking at the best of the best would seem to apply to relatively few people.
Would “chocolat”, “the reader,” “frost/nixon” and “the hours” really be the best of the best?
Tellingly, a recent compilation of best of the decade lists featured only 10 academy best picture nominees out of 34 films released since 2000. In contrast, the BFCA with 10 nominees managed to get 17. Notably, less than half of the English language films were best picture nominees, but over two thirds of the English language films were BFCA nominees.
I don’t know. How many people who don’t obsessively follow film fests (e.g. us) would ever hear about something like Precious if it wasn’t nominated for best picture? Expanding to 10 might help some of the smaller, rather than mid-range, films garner wide-spread attention. Which I think could be particularly important given how many art-house studios have either gone under or were folded back into parent companies.
I think it could also help genre films and films released earlier in the year.
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Where’s 500 Days of Summer consideration at?