Five or ten ?

In the 1960s and 1970s, when there were only a few television networks and no such thing as home video, the film industry regularly cranked out good movies worth seeing in a theater, one after another. I went to the movies several times a week until I finished college and married, then at least a few times each month until I got into the child-rearing business.

When the Academy Award show came on TV, it was a safe bet most years that all five of the Best Picture nominees were good movies, and that I'd seen at least 2-3 of them. As the seventies ended and the eighties began, my budget and family obligations eventually served as an anchor on my moviegoing habit, and gradually, seeing a movie in a theater became something reserved for special occasions. And so it went until my son was old enough to pal around with, and we started going to movies like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Arachnophobia, Goodfellas and Tremors together.

Today, I read a magazine article reporting that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is expanding its Best Picture category to increase the nominees from five to ten. There's some speculation that ABC threatened to cut back its license fees unless more of the Oscar telecast was devoted to hyping the big box office hits (and presumably expanding the TV audience).

I hate to sound like a geezer, but I'm not sure there are ten movies released every year that deserve to be rated the "Best" anything. Every time I go to the theater, I sit through a stream of trailers and usually don't see any coming attractions that are attractive at all. Occasionally there'll be a popcorn movie like District Nine that stands out among the special effects extravaganzas, or a movie like Amelia that looks like it's intended for audiences older than the high school crowd. Those are the exceptions.

At any rate, maybe opening up the BP category will wind up being a good thing. Or maybe the prize will start going to car-chases-and-explosions movies that make a gazillion dollars during the months when school's out. I'm willing to wait and see.