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Canwest News Service
Oscar nominations are due at 5 p.m. tomorrow. All members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences must hand in their selections, which this year include 10 nominations for best picture instead of the usual five.
While the point of extending the list of nominees to 10 this year (which hasn't been done in over six decades) is ostensibly to give more publicity to more of the year's exceptional films, some Academy members are having difficulty remembering more than six or seven movies they actually enjoyed in 2009.
Pete Hammond, a critic at the Los Angeles Times, recently mentioned in a blog post that many of his colleagues — who also happen to be Academy members — have been panicking over how to complete the remaining spots on their Oscar ballots.
"It's an epidemic," he said. "According to the overwhelming majority of members to whom I have spoken, they get to five or six and give up on the other slots. One voter went so far as to send me an email asking me to suggest seven other movies to augment their own three choices."
Apparently, yet another member was at such a loss for ideas, he decided to put Sam Raimi's horror-schlock-fest Drag Me to Hell on the ballot because … well, why the hell not? It's not as if it'll make the final round of voting.
Technically, no one is required to hand in a complete list of 10 films, but the Academy's instruction sheet encourages it:
"In order for any achievement to be among those chosen from this balloting, it must have at least one first place vote," reads the fine print. "It is important that your FIRST CHOICE be written on the FIRST LINE. You need not fill in all 10 lines. The more preferences you indicate, however, the greater the certainty that your ballot will influence the best picture nominees list."
In other words, best to pad out the nominee list with Drag Me to Hell if you want that No. 1 vote for The Hurt Locker to really count for something.
Alternatively, members could take a cue from actor and comedian Billy Connolly, who decided to fill all the remaining slots on his nomination ballot with lesser-known indie films made by close friends.
"You can't help it," he told a New York Times reporter. "Loyalty goes a long way."
