The head honchos behind the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

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has made a bold decision shocking the movie world.  Well maybe not, but in this over hyped  summer 09 movie galor where big hype is making up for small you know what, this is the big news as we enter the weekend with yet another disappointing summer blockbuster in Transformers 2.

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They decided to bump the best picture award to 10 nominees compared to the usual 5.

“After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year,” said Sid Ganis the upcoming 2010 Oscar’s President.

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There is a lot of speculation about this and what movies from Oscars 2009 could have been included if 10 movies were chosen last year.  Maybe a movie like Wall-E which received massive critical buzz as well as box office success, or a movie like the mega blockbuster The Dark Knight.  Even though some thought The Dark Knight was overrated, it still could arguably been considered for the title.  A movie that I thought was excellent that got robbed was Gran Torino, written and directed by Clint Eastwood.  To me that certainly deserved to be at least nominated and I honestly thought it was top 3 movies of the year and easily could have seen it taken the crown.

I understand the move by the Academy, a lot of times there are smaller more critically accalimed movies that get nominated but are never seen by anyone until after the awards.  Last year, those were movies like The Reader.

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I personally think this is a bad move.  I understand it widens the range, and movies that may be top movies in their respective categories, (Best Animation, Foreign Film) could easily be in this mold.  But it also ruins a lot of the argument, and it just expands the list of crappy movies that already exists.  It’s like when the MLB decides let’s make a team in bumblewahoohie land.  More movies being nominated means the category becomes less exclusive, allowing more crap to fill in.  This past year alone it was easily debatable to be one of the lesser movie years in awhile.  If you were to add more movies to that list it would almost be laughable.  Also, it would ruin some of the fun debate among movie fans about which movies really should have been in it and which ones nominated clearly have no chance like the fat kid in school taking the head cheerleader to prom.

I think this is a bad decision for the Academy, something just to raise attention and possibly ratings for a lack of quality movies.

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What do you think about the move? Striking Distance move