This is old news, and by now, you’re all most likely aware, but since we don’t have a thread dedicated to this announcment, I’d thought I’d best bring it up.
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis announced on June 24 in a press conference that for the 82nd Academy Awards and all ceremonies to follow, the Best Picture category will feature ten nominations instead of five, which was typical of recent past ceremoines.
“After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year,” said Ganis. “The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.”
“Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to 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,” commented Ganis. “I can’t wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February.”
You can watch video of the press conference at the link provided:
By the way, I put forward this motion earlier, but would it be better if there was a movie board created seeing the amount of film-related threads here? It’s okay if the forum admins/mods would rather leave it as it is, but it may be more organised to have a board devoted just to movie talk, just a suggestion. 
I really would have liked to see 
I mean, at least it seems as though movies that might have been left out for some silly reason have more of a chance of getting the award, but then at the same time, is it as much of an accolade to be nominated in the first place now? Is this reflective of the improvement of the quality of our movies, or is it a bid by the Academy to become more popular and exciting and perhaps less controversial?