Weeeellllll….Look who comes crawlin’ back. It took a little movie about a man dressed as a bat, trying to stop a psychotic clown, and another cartoon movie about a robot with a heart of gold to make Hollywood WAKE THE F UP! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, “The Academy,” announced yesterday they are expanding the best picture nominees of the Academy Awards to 10 nominees, from the traditional five. This is, in my mind, and I think everyone else’s, an appeasement move to change the image of the Academy of being short-sighted and out of touch with the movie-going public, as it doesn’t USUALLY honor popular movies as best pictures.

Many popular, high-grossing films have been nominated and won in the past (i.e. Titanic, LOTR: Return of the King, etc.) but USUALLY the Academy only honors low-budget “indie/historical/period” films. With the snubbing of The Dark Knight and Wall-E last year, the Academy received a lot of grief for not having the balls to nominate a brilliantly executed, universally-acclaimed, box-office shattering blockbuster.  President of the Academy, Sid Ganis, had this to say on the change:

Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize. I can’t wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. While I think it is a good move in order to honor popular movies, I think it is sort of a cop-out in order to avoid the backlash that it received last year for the snubbing of The Dark Knight. A snubbing that most industry entertainment outlets agree upon. I love the Oscars and could talk all day about them. Instead of writing 5,000 words about this development, I decided to make the first Movie Mash Podcast on my feelings on this change, what it means and why it happened. Check it out:

What Do You Think? Discuss.