Twice as much fun?

I'd like to thank the academy for making my life more complicated – but probably more fun, too.
 
First and foremost, the annual Oscars show is a TV show. Its ratings are off. Hollywood always struggles between art and commerce, and the Oscars are supposed to be for the best efforts of the year. Fair enough, but maybe more people would tune in if some of the movies in the running were at least, you know, movies that people actually went to see.
 
So the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar people) have decided that there will be 10 nominees, not five, for best picture each year. Maybe it opens the door for a blockbuster or two, maybe a comedy and maybe – hold on now – an arthouse movie or two. As one of those people who tries to see all the contenders, I can feel a few more dollars flying out of my wallet and a few more hours spent in a dark place thinking, "Why am I watching this?"
 
What will this look like? Let's consider the last three years.
 
The 2008 winner for best picture was sentimental favorite "Slumdog Millionnaire," a good pick. The other four nominees were "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk" and, for some reason, "The Reader."
 
So add five more, and let's remember this added, unspoken criterion: At least a couple should be movies lots of people saw and might root for on Oscar night. I guess that adds "Wall-E" and "The Dark Knight." Then what? How about "Rachel Getting Married" -- my pick for best picture of the year, period -- plus "The Wrestler" and "The Visitor." That still leaves "Iron Man," "Doubt" and "Syneddoche, New York" out in the cold.
 
And "Slumdog Millionnaire" still wins.
 
The 2007 winner was "No Country for Old Men," which was going to win in a field of two, five or 50. I'd have voted for "There Will Be Blood," and my personal favorite of all movies in the last decade or so is "Michael Clayton." The other two were the lovely but overwrought "Atonement" and, of course, "Juno." Now the trick is to find five more.
 
The top five grossing movies that year were all parts of a series ("Spider-Man 3," "Shrek the Third," etc.). Then you're into "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "Alvin and the Chipmunks." Really? "Alvin and the Chipmunks?" So the second five might be "Before the Devil Knows Your Dead," (a very good, haunting movie), "Ratatouille," "The Great Debaters" and the overrated "Into the Wild." (The lovely and talented Catherine Keener is the best hippie chick ever, but even she can only do so much here.) And No. 10 is "La Vie En Rose." No, wait, it isn't. It's a foreign film, it's really depressing, and no one saw it, even though Marion Cotillard deservedly won the Oscar for best actress.
 
The 2006 winner was "The Departed," which had as many F-bombs as dead bodies. Nice -- but it was a good movie. The other four were "Letters from Iwo Jima," (very, very good), "Little Miss Sunshine," the overhyped and underwhelming "Babel," and "The Queen." I think No. 6 is easy here, "Dream Girls." These half dozen pretty much stood out from the crowd that year.
 
From the top-grossing list, let's add "Cars." Again, many on that list are sequels, prequels, what have you: ""Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," "Night at the Museum," "The Da Vinci Code." I saw "X-Men: The Last Stand," the fourth-highest grossing movie of that year. It was OK. Even my teenage son wouldn't give it more than an OK. Oscar? Uh, no.
 
So the four to round out the field might be "United 93," "Pan's Labyrinth" (another foreign movie), "The Last King of Scotland" and "Little Children." (Still, the best movie I saw from that year was "The Lives of Others," which won the foreign-language Oscar and didn't come to Kansas City until later that spring. This was an injustice to us all. If you haven't seen it, put it in your Netflix queue.)
 
The Oscar people don't want another debacle like "Titanic" -- but they want people to think it's possible. My suggestion? Let's all go see "Up." It'll be in the top 10. And maybe "Public Enemies." But you can still skip "Transformers."