AMPAS has announced a major change for next year's Oscars: a ten-film Best Picture race:

"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 academy President Sid 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, Ganis added. "I can't wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February."

Translation: A Best Picture nomination is about to mean even less than it ever has! Even more shitty films will make the cut than already do! We have to do this because the ratings continue to suck and so we've got to find a way to work in more crappy-but-populist movies so people who turn up their noses at arty films can feel included!

Granted, this might mean one or two truly deserving films that normally would fall just outside the top five favorites sneaks in, but is such a diluted field really worth it just for that? Also, the percentage of dull and/or dumb junk I'm going to have to watch if I want keep up my streak of seeing all the Best Picture nominees in time for the telecast just went up. Damn.

Thoughts?

I've been a bad fangirl: as of last night, three Half-Blood Prince trailers have gone by without me posting them. Let's catch up, shall we?

First, the brand new full-length trailer. I'm embedding for ease, but as always I highly recommend a direct download for quality's sake. You can find it in every format imaginable here.






And then we have the IMAX trailer:






And the international trailer:




( Spoilery reaction within. )

( Proceeding in the spirit of Tigger. )

Pool winner to come after I've slept and tabulated. Good night!

First, if you're participating in the pool, make sure you've voted in all 24 categories. No, you can't try to increase your accuracy by pretending that the shorts categories don't exist. Also note that because LiveJournal polls top out at 15 questions each, there are actually two separate polls in the post, one right after each other. If you filled out multiple categories but only clicked one button, only some of your choices recorded. You can go back and edit your responses right up until I close the poll before the telecast starts tomorrow night.

( So, these are my predictions. )

See you back here tomorrow for the liveblog!

My Oscar picks are forthcoming, but first I wanted to give anyone interested in playing along with me a chance to jump in my little pool. I'll post the winner's username on Monday. Given how few people seem to be excited about the awards this year, your chances of earning bragging rights are really good. So get to clicking!

(Note that there are two separate polls. Please vote in all 24 categories.)

( Part 1 )
( Part 2 )

It's that time of year again: Turner Classic Movies' annual 31 Days of Oscar begins in a few hours. Check out this pretty promo:



This year's theme is TCM University, with movies cleverly grouped together based on "department" and further categorized into "classes." For instance, March 1st is brought to you by the psychology department, which is showing Gaslight, Rear Window, Vertigo, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind in its Obsessive Behavior class. See, clever!

Looking over the lineup, have a feeling I might find myself rewatching a few well-loved favorites (Moonstruck, The Apartment, Imitation of Life, The Birds, Fiddler on the Roof, Annie Hall, Goodbye Mr. Chips, the aforementioned Rear Window and Vertigo, The Philadelphia Story). But more importantly, this could be the month I actually catch a bunch of movies I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't seen (Network, Lawrence of Arabia, Roman Holiday, Mildred Pierce, Rebecca, Sophie's Choice, The Children's Hour, Adam's Rib, The 400 Blows). Seriously, some of those have been sitting in my Netflix queue since I signed up seven years ago, so if I don't take advantage of this opportunity, I probably never will get around to them.

And now I'm off to clear some space on my TiVo.

Here's all of that international HBP trailer that played on Japanese TV last week. You can hear quite a bit of new dialogue beneath the (quite enthusiastic) voiceover.





Also, there have been a bunch of new stills released over the last couple of months that I haven't posted. I have been putting them in this gallery, though, so you can check them out there if you're interested.

A full list of Oscar nominees is here. They're broken down by movie here. I've seen the underlined movies.


Best Picture:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

I pretty much knew The Dark Knight was out as soon as Kate Winslet's nomination for The Reader was announced in the lead category instead of the supporting (where she'd been running for a better chance at an award, despite the fact that it is a lead performance). But I was sure The Reader had the fifth slot when Ron Howard's name followed David Fincher's instead of Christopher Nolan's. There were two factors I should have remembered: never bet against a Holocaust movie, and never bet on a genre film.



Best Director:
David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon)
Gus Van Sant (Milk)
Stephen Daldry (The Reader)
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)

A direct match-up with Best Picture. Boring.



Best Actor:
Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

The Richard Jenkins nomination makes me very happy. He'd been counted out by the last quarter of the year, but I'm so glad he wasn't forgotten. The Brad Pitt nomination irks me despite not having seen the film, but I've thought he was lousy in every other drama he's been in, so I can't imagine this one will be any different. Brendan Gleeson deserves to be in here for In Bruges, damn it.



Best Actress:
Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married)
Angelina Jolie (Changeling)
Melissa Leo (Frozen River)
Meryl Streep (Doubt)
Kate Winslet (The Reader)

This is what I loathe about Oscar: Angelina Jolie shrieking in a Clint Eastwood film gets in ahead of Sally Hawkins, who is so, so amazing in Happy-Go-Lucky. Guess I'll have to just replay her Golden Globes win over in my head. Sigh. I feel the same about Melissa Leo's nomination as I did about Jenkins', with the only difference being that I missed Frozen River, which was my biggest moviegoing regret of last year. Luckily, it's coming out on DVD a couple of weeks before the ceremony.



Best Supporting Actor:
Josh Brolin (Milk)
Robert Downey, Jr. (Tropic Thunder)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt)
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road)

Another Oscar rule: never count out someone playing a mentally ill character, particularly when that character is a truth-teller, hence the Shannon nod. (I'm assuming it's that way in the movie; it is in the book.) Brolin was fine in Milk, but I was particularly fond of Emile Hirsch in that film, and wish it would have been him instead. (Never count against a second generation actor? That would apply to Jolie as well...) I'm quite pleased to see Downey recognized here, as it's a damn entertaining performance. But it may be even more entertaining to see him try to do a better job of hiding his aggravation when Ledger inevitably wins than he managed at the Globes.



Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Adams (Doubt)
Penélope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Viola Davis (Doubt)
Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)

Hooray for Tomei, who's been doing some interesting stuff in indies these last few years. And though it wasn't exactly a surprise, I'm glad to see that Viola Davis will be getting at least one more month's worth of attention. She's terrific and needs to be cast in more films.



Best Adapted Screenplay:
Eric Roth and Robin Swicord (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
John Patrick Shanley (Doubt)
Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon)
David Hare (The Reader)
Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire)

Given how the rest of it shook out, no surprises here.



Best Original Screenplay:
Courtney Hunt (Frozen River)
Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky)
Martin McDonagh (In Bruges)
Dustin Lance Black (Milk)
Andrew Stanton (Wall-E)

The most pleasing category for me, and not just because it's the one in which I've seen the most nominees. Leigh and McDonagh wrote what will likely remain my two favorite films of the year even after I see everything else. Frozen River is a teeny tiny film written and directed by a woman. Black began his passion project of a script without any backing, just because he wanted to honor Milk. And Wall-E was beautifully done; the relative lack of dialogue doesn't make it any less a great story.



Other things of note: Though it was expected, I'm happy to see the wonderful Man on Wire in the documentary feature category. The Dark Knight is rightfully recognized in several technical categories, including cinematography, but I'm just not sure it deserves one for editing. Interesting that there are only three nominees in the song category, and none of them is by Bruce Springsteen. That shaves off a few minutes of show right there!

So, there's exactly one month until the awards are handed out. Hopefully, it'll be a month chock full of moviegoing for me.