Considering the other films that came out in 2009, I certainly think Up would have not been nominated if it was only limited to five nominations. Heck, I could think of five other films that were more deserving than Up.
Just to make it clear, I’m not playing favorites when it comes to deciding the best film of 2009. Up is definitely one of my personal favorites, but there are other films I know of that have more merits than Up when it comes to getting the award.
While I do agree that Up likely would have been snubbed had there only been five available slots, I totally disagree with the statement that the nomination “comes with an asterisk”. Like you said, this is the first time in a few decades that we have ten nominees, but you have to realize that by saying that, you’re also implicitly stating that there was a time period during which there were ten nominees.
My point is, there isn’t really such a thing as “normal circumstances” because the Academy can make up whatever rules they wish (in which case the rules they operate under become “normal”), and even if there were such a thing as “normal circumstances” (I suppose from the perspective of the viewers), the Best Picture category still used to have ten nominees a few decades ago, so there is really nothing “abnormal” about the expansion to ten nominees.
Three out of four of my top movies made the list, which doesn’t happen often, and that’s because of the expanded list. Anyone who has been following this knows that The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air are the leaders, which is too bad, and perhaps vote splitting for them by all the actors will help either Avatar or Up. My fourth movie is Star Trek, which does not have a completely original screenplay since it’s a franchise, albeit reborn. Avatar’s partly predictable + partly stereotypical storyline will hurt it, although Titanic was certainly not completely original, and the new stuff in that movie was a bit too melodramatic.
Like several others here, the unique screenplay of District 9 makes it my favorite to win, and yes, Ratatouille certainly was in the Top 10 movies of 2007, but the critics didn’t place it quite as high as either WALL-E or Up, presumably because the obligatory chase scenes were more interesting in the latter.
It’s nice to see sci-fi /fantasy films score so many places in this Top10 list.
I am very, very happy to see Up nominated for Best Picture and for Pixar to gain such recognition outside of the ‘animation circle’, so to speak. I personally am not amazingly concerned about award ceremonies and that sort of thing - I don’t know half the other films on the Best Picture list, as most of them haven’t even been released yet here - but it is good that Pixar and Up have done well with Oscar nominations. It’s just backing up what we already know about the film. 
I can’t believe it! Finally, Pixar gets the kind of recognition they totally deserve! Hopefully, this is the first of many Best Picture nominations for Pixar! 
As I mentioned in the “Up Awards” thread, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I’m very pleased Pixar has made history for being the second animated film to have a BP nomination, but then again, I’m disappointed this has to come after the Academy has ballooned its number of eligible nominations. It almost feels like they’re telling the viewer, “Ya see? We look out for the animated underdog, too!”
Of course, there’s the less cynical way of looking at it; as some of you have said, expanding the list is not a new thing and has been done before, and under the ‘new set of rules’, Up has earned its place. I don’t know… I’m still very bitter about the Slumdog sweep last year to trust the Academy again, but I’ll still be crossing my fingers and toes that Up will bring home the little man trophy.
On another note, I’m very pleased District 9 and Avatar also got BP nominations. It’s gonna be very tough, because these three (including Up) happen to be among my top favourite films of the year, so if any one of these wins, I’ll be a happy man.
IMO, here’s who I want to win in order:
Surprisingly, I would probably rank them according to my own enjoyment this way:
The reason why I want Up to win, though, is just so Pixar could prove a point to Academy that an animated film can win on its own merits, regardless of format. District 9 is the sci-fi’ underdog’ made on the cheap, with a much more original storyline than Avatar, so that’s why I want it second in line. And Avatar, as much as I enjoy it personally, last, because Cameron already made tons of moolah and awards, so it’s time to give recognition to another film for a change.
Haven’t watched Precious, The Blind Side, Inglourious Basterds or The Hurt Locker, but I’m very curious to do so. Couldn’t care about the rest, as they seem too artsy or indy for my taste.
Amazingly, I have had the great pleasure to see most of the Best Picture nominations last year. From the list, I’ve seen Avatar, An Education, A Serious Man, Inglourious Basterds, Up, Up in the Air, District 9, The Hurt Locker, and Precious. The only film I haven’t seen yet is The Blind Side.
Overall, I hope one of these films win:
As for what the top three films are this year (with the most nominations):
So, those are pretty much the big films of 2009 that you should expect to get a lot of attention when the show comes around.
Overall, I hope Avatar does not win. I think there’s a lot more to a film than just being a special effects showcase. While Avatar was a thoroughly entertaining film, there are other films released in 2009 with stronger merits than Avatar.
If I had to place a bet on any one film, I would bet on The Hurt Locker winning Best Picture. Hopefully, it does win, because it really deserves that win.
The Academy will be using a new method to count votes in the Best Picture catagory with multiple counts and re-counts. It’s not going to be just “which movie gets the most votes at first” as it has been in the past.
latimes.com/entertainment/ne … 0933.story
The Oscars are using a preferential voting system this year to determine the Best Picture winner. Although attempting to understand the system can sometimes feel a little like trying to divine the secrets of cold fusion, the system is actually logical – sort of.
Whereas all other categories will use the same system used in the past – every voter gets to pick one of the five nominees, and the nominee with the most votes wins – the 10-nominee Best Picture category will function differently.
Voters will be asked to rank their Best Picture choices from 1 to 10 (though they are not required to complete the ballot in full). Then, the Academy will gather the ballots and separate them in piles according to voters’ first choices. Each movie gets its own pile – the film that appears most frequently as a first place choice will naturally have the largest stack, the movie with the next/most first place votes will have the second largest, and so forth. Then, each stack is counted.
If one film has more than 50% of the votes on the first round (unlikely), it will be declared the winner. If it doesn’t, the Academy will take the shortest stack – the movie that got the fewest first place votes – eliminate it from contention, remove its stack from the table, and redistribute those voters’ second choices to all the other stacks.
The tally then begins again: If a film now has passed 50% of the ballots (still pretty unlikely), it wins. If it doesn’t, the auditors go to the smallest stack left, eliminate that movie, remove that stack, and go down those ballots to voters’ next highest choice (of a movie that remains in contention, of course), and redistribute the ballots across the piles once again. The process repeats until one stack ends up with a majority.
What all this means in practical terms – apart from a lot of slips of paper – is that, because it’s unlikely that auditors will work their way past most voters’ fourth or fifth choices before arriving at a winner, it actually could be preferable for a film to garner a lot of second -and third- place votes than to be a polarizing choice that splits evenly between first place votes and, say, eighth and ninth place on the ballot.
That, in turn, means a movie could pull a Bush vs. Gore – win Best Picture despite not getting the most first place votes. Although, because the Academy guarantees a secret ballot, few people would ever know.
Hmm, well that sounds like a very thorough and hopefully fair system of voting, though it’s very complicated. Interesting information, miafka.
I think that’s a pretty good system to use. It sounds fair.
Let’s just say, if there was only 10 people voting, and the film that got the most number one votes had four of those votes… the other six votes were scattered between the rest of the movies. Would it really be fair to let a film win because it got 40% of the votes, and yet the other 60% may or may not agree with it? I think that the old way is more broken than this new method they’re using. If it turns out to work well, I hope they incorporate this method to all the other categories in future ceremonies.
I’m so glad I went to bed and just looked up the nominations after I got up.
FINALLY. It shouldn’t have taken 10 nominations, and it shouldn’t have taken this long to happen (coughlast yearcough) But, throwing all that out the window, and just realizing the first CG animated film has been nominated for Best Picture, and it’s Pixar, FINALLY.
No matter what happens when envelops are opened, Pixar has received the first Best Picture nomination for a computer animated film. It could win NOTHING (and has anybody brought up the possible vote split issue yet?), and it is still in animation history.
Oh, yeah, and the little thing where 3 animated films have nominations outside BAF this year - that is unheard of and totally wonderful. <3
I got delightfully surprised when I saw Up getting nominated for Best Picture. So cool. 
I still have faith in humanity left now…
Great post, miafka, about the preferential system. I’ve been reading about this for a while, and it’s fascinating. (I would love to be the proverbial “fly on the wall” when the BP votes are sorted out.)
It seems to me that the real key to deciding the final winner isn’t about what the voters put down as #2 or #3 on their ballots, but it’s about this: What are the last 3 or 4 films on the table, and how do they show up on the ballots in relation to each other? Say, just for the sake of discussion, that the last 3 films still in contention are Avatar, Hurt Locker, and Up in the Air, and UitA has the smallest stack. When UitA is eliminated, all that matters at that point is which of the remaining 2 films ranks higher on those redistributed ballots, even if they are in positions 9 & 10.
The downside is, a film like Up could get a lot of 2 -3 - 4 votes, but if they are on ballots where the #1 choice is Avatar (presuming that’s one of the front runners), that ballot is going into the Avatar stack and probably staying there for the duration. In order for Up (or anything else) to benefit from the 2nd/3rd/4th place votes, the films ranked above it on that ballot have to be eliminated first.
Yeah, I’m thinkin’ way too hard about this.
Since the nominations were expanded to 10 I was pretty much expecting Up to be part of that. Nevertheless, I am very glad that it was nominated, because its totally deserving of it
Here is a timely article that just came out today comparing all the nominated animation movies and giving wise council that perhaps Up won’t win best animated. I think it will win it, and lose the Best Picture by even a wider margin with voters concentrating all on the ‘timely’ and ‘relationships’ movies such as Hurt Locker and Up in the Air.
hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con … 3daa6eb54a
I just saw Up again today, briefly, at the local Sears store, it just happened to be playing on a widescreen. Having just seen Precious, HL, and UitA in the past week, it was mightily impressive in comparison. The Academy loves all that depressing stuff, closer to reality I guess, not very uplifting. For me all the bombs in HL got kinda boring. And I didn’t really learn much of anything new about inner city black American culture. And the lifestyle of Clooney’s character is indeed disgusting. Why glorify all that elitist jetting around for a sordid business. It was depressing to watch, just like No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood two years ago. At least Pixar can show something awfully depressing for 20 minutes and then turn it into a spiritual uplifting as in 2008’s offering!
Up’s competition:
Up in the Air - a lighthearted, popular, timely and somewhat depressing movie. There’s a twist or two and the acting is very good. Clooney is a Job Termination specialist who is up in the air every day, crisscrossing the country. The screenplay is very nicely done. This is one of the 3 movies most often cited as a possible winner.
A Serious Man - many were surprised this made the list. I couldn’t watch the full movie, a bit too artistic and too Jewish and too goofy for me. The ‘hero’ is a jewish Math professor at a midwestern university who suddenly is being victimized by all he comes into contact with, including family. Sometimes life does indeed imitate this sort of art, where everyone has a view of you that just isn’t in sync with reality, and it’s hard to fight the whole world. Another depressing movie.
Precious - does this really tell you anything new about black / inner city / lower class / educational foibles that you didn’t know already from personal experiences or other movies? But why is she so fat, and what’s she going to do about her lousy, nearly illiterate education? I really liked the dream away sequences. Were they unique… well if not, still, they were superbly done and put the icing on this cake. This movie did well in the theaters. But its yet another depressing movie.
Avatar - I’ve commented about this one at the Avatar thread on this website. It’s one of the top 3 contenders this Sunday for Best Picture and will probably win a number of technical awards. Oh, it’s NOT depressing! Amazing!
Hurt Locker - the last of the big 3 contenders. And it’s indeed depressing. It’s about a roadside bomb squad in Iraq. It’s supporters love that this angle of the war story is being told just right. You really do feel as if you are right there. Acting is very good. The films creator is a former wife of James Cameron, which itself makes quite a story. But for me, even bombs can get boring after a whole movie about them.
Blind Side, An Education haven’t seen these yet fully. The Blind Side did over $200M box and has a moralistic bent. It’s about a football player getting some help getting thru high school to play at a certain college. A question of impropriety arises. Sandra Bullock, thank goodness she moved away from romantic comedy.
District 9 - this has the most unique screenplay of the year. It’s a big alien, sci-fi film with only $30M budget (and $250M box internationally) that comes off as plausible. Women were largely scared away by the violence, male sci-fi buffs were ecstatic (like me). This is my favorite film of the year, over Avatar and Up (and Star Trek). It’s semi-apocalyptic, but manages to avoid depression with an exciting, UPlifting ending, whee!
Inglorious Basterds - a big international hit, loved in Europe and Germany too. Very nice acting and a funky screenplay. It’s a weird sort of WWII special missions movie. There was actually an American group like this in northern Italy near the end of the war. Is that were Tarantino got his idea? This movie seems to be about 4th place in the running, but don’t count it out completely, especially since it did so well everywhere, with public and critics and is a darling with the acting crowd too.
Awesome! Go UP, well deserved. Thanks for listing the other contenders Darkhand, interesting nominations, though I haven’t seen over half of them. Avatar definitely seems to have all the hype going for it. The movie seems overrated. Despite the chances, still rooting for UP (and District 9 2nd).