Can Star Trek win next year's Oscar for best picture?

That certainly seems to be the reasoning behind the Academy's decision to double the number of nominees. In which case, why not treble it? Might there also be room for My Sister's Keeper?

Like the guitar hero out of Spinal Tap, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences believe that increased volume means increased quality. Where Nigel Tufnel dialled his amp to 11, the Oscars are cranking it up to 10 – doubling the number of best picture nominees for next year's ceremony. In official parlance, the 2009 Academy Awards just got twice as good.


Why the change? Could it be that, in this halcyon summer of Transformers and Terminator: Salvation, the Academy are already anticipating a vintage awards season next January; a 100% rise in all-round cinematic greatness? Who would have thought it? We are living in a golden age.

Or is there another reason behind yesterday's announcement? Might it be construed as a chase for higher ratings and an attempt to cater to a broader, more populist base? Earlier this year, the organisation faced widespread criticism (widespread on the internet, at least) for snubbing popular triumphs like The Dark Knight and WALL-E in favour of mid-budget, middlingly successful pictures such as Frost/Nixon, The Reader and Milk. And Academy president Sid Ganis seems to have taken this to heart. "There were more movies that I thought might have fit the nominations," he admitted on Wednesday. "I would not be telling you the truth if I said the words Dark Knight did not come up."

According to Ganis, this latest move is about "casting the net wide". In theory his new, open-door policy could benefit all kinds of films that traditionally fail to make the cut: documentaries and foreign-language dramas and art-house indie comedies. And if a few Star Treks and Drag Me to Hells slip in alongside then hey, so much the better. You might even call this a form of proportional representation. There are something like 6,000 voters in the Academy, and they can't all be fans of Milk and The Reader.

For all that, I'm unconvinced. Yesterday's announcement sounds like a bizarre form of affirmative action; an artificial attempt to "correct" a long-standing voter bias and provide a leg-up for the sort of films that surely don't need one. Except that, ultimately, this is not about helping The Dark Knight and its ilk. It is about finding a way in which The Dark Knight can help the Oscars.

Besides, there's something fundamentally silly about it. If you are going to have 10 best picture nominees, why stop there? Why not 20? Why not 100? That way we could get in Transformers and Race to Witch Mountain, Looking For Eric and In Search of Beethoven.

In the meantime, staring us in the face, is an altogether more sensible alternative. To misquote Spinal Tap's stoic interviewer, why not simply make the five nominees better and make five the top number and make that a little better?

Ah well. Next year's Oscars go up to 10.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jun/25/oscars-star-trek-dark-knight