10 Little Indians

Surprising to me how many bloggers are tearing their hair out over an attempted overhaul of a system that consistently fails us. Everywhere I surf, I’m reading about how this 10-nominee tweak will “water down the prestige” or “dilute the honor.” Really? Afraid to screw around with the grand tradition of paying tight-knit tribute to drivel like Life is Beautiful, Forrest Gump and Crash? Mustn’t mess with the esteemed yearly ritual of spurning the best-reviewed movies of the year?

Anyone who’s happy with having only 3 great movies nominated for Best Picture every year, alongside a couple of inevitable sacks of rubbish should be upset about this disruption to the status quo.

But if expanding the field to 10 nominees results in even half of them truly qualifying as the “Best” of the year, then I’m all for it.

I’d have been a lot less bothered by Juno and Michael Clayton if The Assassination of Jesse James…, Le scaphandre et le papillon, Ratatoillle, Into the Wild, and The Bourne Ultimatum had been in the line-up to “dilute the honor.”

yeah ok, I know all 5 of those would never have made the cut, but I’d have been glad to see any 3 of them nommed — even if the other two additions had to be Beowulf and Norbit. Because I try to ignore the annual trumpery of vaunted mediocrity, so I can focus on the genuine excellence.

Does anybody look back with nostalgia at the BP nomination for The Towering Inferno? No, we remember it as the year of The Godfather II, Chinatown, and The Conversation. We might be able to speak with apt respect about Best Picture nominees Young Frankenstein, Lacombe Lucien and Amacord, too, if there had been 10 available slots in 1974. How cool would that be?

Juno and Michael Clayton are fine films, arguably worthy of any legitimate Top 10. But crowding out Zodiac, The Lives of Others, Eastern Promises or the other 5 listed above? So the Wise Men can make their reverent pilgrimage to deliver deliver swag bags of gold, frankincense and myrrh to Ron Howard every Winter? That’s the disreputable heritage a lot of Oscar bloggers are fighting to preserve.

Everybody cries about how much the Oscars suck, but nobody wants to tamper with the time-honored suckage?

Here’s how I’ve felt for years: If it’s not Brokeback, fix it.