Levinson: Oscars changing of Best Picture system not a good thing

Sidney Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, announced earlier… Sidney Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, announced earlier this week that the Oscars would include 10 nominations for Best Picture instead of the usual five.

The Academy’s decision affects individual movie audiences differently — the average audience will not take it the same way as the die-hard cinemaphile. Let me elaborate …

The Average Audience: has a real job. Most likely saw “Iron Man,” “Wall-E” or “Step-Brothers” last summer. Hasn’t heard of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “The Decalogue.”

No big deal. So what if they name 10? You still probably won’t even watch the Oscars. And who could blame you?

If “The Dark Knight” was nominated last year, though, you might have flipped on the telecast for just a little bit. And, accidently, of course, you might have learned more about some unknown films you haven’t heard of.. Maybe you’d have seen “Synecdoche, NY” or “Revolutionary Road,” but you still wouldn’t have checked out Herzog’s documentary about Antarctica.

The Filmmaker: has a real job, but doesn’t call it a job. Spends extended amounts of time in front of video screens or camera viewfinders. Might have heard of Kieślowski’s “The Decalogue.”

You could be a nominee, too! These days, getting an Oscar nod is easier than finding Lindsay Lohan in a crappy straight-to-DVD flick..

So maybe your little indie flick starring Billy Baldwin might catch the recently widened attention of the Academy, and, as helpful as a Baldwin may be to an independent film’s advertising campaign, you can now attach that shiny “Nominated for Best Picture” sticker onto the DVD cover. Then you get more cash-money, and everyone wins. And by everyone I mean you — and Billy Baldwin.

The Cinemaphile: Either has no job or has an intellectual job, like professor of early romantic Sumerian linguistics. Has more foreign films on the Netflix account queue than there are existential themes in a Jean-Luc Goddard film (if you get this joke, you’re a cinemaphile) and owns the Deluxe Special Edition DVD of “The Decalogue” by Krzysztof Kieślowski.

It’s time to start saturating the message boards on film sites all over the internet. You accuse the Academy of plotting to take four to five hours of your lives for their Oscar telecast when you could be watching four to five hours of “The Decalogue”— quite the fiendish ploy.

And Kevin Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” beating Scorsese’s “Goodfellas”!? — you’re still not over that.

Even with 10 fish in the net instead of five, the same fish is going to end up with the golden man. If “The Dark Knight” was actually nominated with nine other films, would it really have any chance of winning? No — of course “Slumdog Millionaire” would always win.

Nothing will make the Oscars look any brighter until they make the only truly necessary change — let Conan O’Brien host.

To all audiences, regardless of “Decalogue” viewership, the 10 Best Picture nods modify the length of the Oscars. No fancy word play necessary — this is a bad thing. Adding an extra 30 to 35 minutes to an already lengthy Oscar telecast, not including commercial breaks? The end is nigh.

Making the Oscars longer is one thing the Academy desperately needs to avoid. If we’re lucky, at least they’ll get rid of the whole “five previous Oscar winners having word-sex with the nominees” in the Best Actor and Actress categories, as was seen in this past years telecast (YouTube it — you’ll know what I mean). I also have to subject myself to Sofia Loren’s sun-dried raisin body again — the scorched wounds in my eyes still haven’t healed.

With that said, by adding the possibility for more genres to the Best Picture category, how can you possibly compare the opposites of drama and comedy. Not that I’m against comedies winning the big prize, but it’s like comparing ketchup and mustard in taste. And could a documentary or animated film ever win Best Picture in contemporary Hollywood? Technically, they already have their own separate categories, so breaching that stylistic chasm seems depressingly unrealistic.

Let’s be optimistic, though. Now Pixar might win the coveted Best Picture award it has deserved for so long with “Up.” And then maybe Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are” will be awesome — despite the negative press surrounding it — and score the nod. Maybe “Nine,” a new maturely themed musical, will win. Maybe “9,” the non-musical, will win.

The possibilities of Best Picture will be broadened, but the controversy will always remain. What it ultimately comes down to, however, is if not only the controversy, but the entire Oscar ceremony, can remain relevant.