There have been many solutions offered up to “fix” the Academy, and it sounds like they’re moving in the right direction to freshen things up a bit with their nearly 100 year old institution. They are planning to hopefully up their Best Picture nominees to ten, something we’ve been championing since they changed it in 2011. This is a really good solution since they’re close to ten nominees every year anyway. Why not just make it an even ten? It’s either that or get rid of the preferential ballot and add a new category like “best effects driven motion picture.”
Writer and filmmaker Rod Lurie has come up with an interesting solution in a guest column at Hollywood Reporter – I don’t know if they will consider it or not – probably not but it’s a wonderful idea:
In order to immediately deal with this situation I’d like to offer up a radical solution: Nominations should no longer be determined by the entire membership. Instead every branch of the Academy should appoint a blue ribbon committee select its nominees. The Academy president would appoint a “foreman” for each of the committees. (Note: I volunteer!) Each committee would consist of an equal distribution of members who have been in AMPAS for up to 10 years, up to 20 years, up to 30 years and then over that. All committee members would commit to seeing most of the eligible films every year. (It’s impossible for anyone to see all of them.) The blue ribbon committee members would have a voting day in which they would debate, cajole and argue the cases for various films. Then they would vote to determine the five nominees. And then all Academy members would choose a winner from among the nominees, just as they do now.
