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The nominees there are James Cameron for Avatar, Neill Blomkamp for District 9, Lone Scherfig for An Education, Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, and Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. Once again, even though the BAFTA voters aren't going to be voting for the Oscars, one movie keeps showing up to prove its worth: District 9. With each passing day, it's becoming more and more likely that this sci-fi action film set in South Africa is going to not only show up among the Best Picture nominees, but be a serious dark horse contender to steal the prize. Some of you may not feel like it's possible that such a movie could win, let alone be nominated. However, it's clear that, despite the three frontrunners - Avatar, The Hurt Locker, and Up in the Air - holding a powerful sway over voters, those same voters aren't so sure about what to vote for.

You may have read the article by Pete Hammond earlier this week, in which he posed the wild idea that the comic horror movie Drag Me To Hell could be nominated for Best Picture. Although the film was well-regarded by most audiences (I must confess to not being among those folks), its inclusion at the Oscars would be nothing short of gasp-inducing shock. The main point of Hammond's article in the L.A. Times was that a good chunk of Academy voters are facing a big problem: they can't find ten movies to nominate for Best Picture. Now, before we go any further, let's remember a few things: Hammond is well-respected as an Oscar prognosticator, but he's also the king of the blurb. If you've seen an ad for a movie, you've likely seen him praise it. It doesn't matter if the movie is Avatar or Tooth Fairy (who else has reserved their tickets??), he'll like it.

Also, the people Hammond is talking to for the article don't represent every single person who votes on the Oscars. Moreover, these people shouldn't be considered representative of the entire Academy, right? It seems so unlikely that I, a regular person with an average five-day-a-week job, could see far more than 10 good movies in a year, and a person with a likely higher-paying job couldn't. That said, despite having DVD screeners sent to them like crazy, some voters are finding it hard to spend the time to watch movies (who knows? Maybe if they were focused on watching movies in their spare time instead of being interviewed, we wouldn't have this problem). So, there will be many ballots that don't list ten movies. What movies will be listed? The movies that mattered most to voters, the movies that entertained voters. Movies like District 9 and, in at least one case, Drag Me To Hell.

There was some initial skepticism that the extension of five Best Picture nominees to ten would lead to undeserving movies. Granted, there are some people who don't think that Star Trek or District 9 should get nominated, if only because they're science-fiction action movies. I, as noted above, wouldn't be for Drag Me To Hell or The Hangover, for example, getting nominated, but not because of their genres. I just don't think they're two of the best movies of the year. If that's the case with some voters, fine; you can't blame people for their opinions, as long as their opinions aren't colored by the assumption that, because it's a genre movie, a movie won't be good. The message to take from Hammond's article is the same one people take from most pre-Oscar news: a healthy amount of Oscar voters don't seem to like watching movies, or don't understand why people get so nuts about the awards they vote for.

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