Osc2Several media outlets are reporting that the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is changing its Best Picture voting rules now that 10 films will be nominated for the top award. This fall, an announcement will go out to the membership about how, on the final ballot, Oscar voters will be asked to rank all 10 nominees in order of preference, then the same complicated preferential system used to tally Best Picture nominees will be used to determine one winner. As a result, a film could be the first choice of the largest number of voters, but still not win Best Picture. Instead, it could be pushed out by another movie that got fewer No. 1 votes but more No. 2′s and No. 3′s. This is to ensure that a Best Picture can’t win with less than one-fifth of the vote. But it’s fucked. It also favors the major Hollywood studios, around whom the change allowing 10 Best Picture nominees was meant to help — and, in turn, the sinking Oscar broadcast ratings. Oscar SherakAMPAS executive director Bruce Davis revealed the news today to other media outlets but not DHD. (Since I don’t agree with this 10 Best Picture change, and I can’t like the usual Academy bullshit, and I won’t underestimate what an overpaid horse’s ass Davis truly is, I was shut out. But I’ll keep expressing my independent opinion all the same…) This 10 Best Picture nominees idea was newly appointed AMPAS president Tom Sherak’s when he was chairman of AMPAS’ Awards Review Committee, and now everyone can see that voting for the films on the final ballot won’t express the will of the Oscar voters. This makes me sick, especially since the entire Academy Award process is already so lacking in integrity. Nor am I alone: as one top movie producer emailed me just now, “First, Tom Sherak as president. Now this new voting method. OMG. Oscar is drowning, and Tom is the lifeguard on duty? Yikes.”

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