A few days before the 83rd annual Academy Awards, I thought it would be appropriate to rank the big kahuna of the Oscars: Best Picture. In the second year of the ten nominees experiment, I would still say it is a success, with a wide range of movies, although the diversity of films in this year's nominees isn't as great as last year. In this year's group, we have the expected dramatic fare ("The Social Network", "Black Swan", "127 Hours", "The Fighter") and period pieces ("The King's Speech", "True Grit"), but we also have an independent film ("Winter's Bone"), an animated film ("Toy Story 3"), a comedy ("The Kid's Are All Right"), and an action/fantasy film ("Inception"). It's a pretty good batch, without any obvious stinkers such as "The Blind Side" was last year, but there is also a lot of mediocrity on display. Many of the film's would be on my own personal ballot, but there were some key snubs that I would have liked to see on the list. First and foremost, I would have loved to see the British "Another Year" make the cut. At the beginning of the Oscar season, it was commonly on the Best Picture list of many Oscar prognosticators, but as time went on, unfortunately the film was pushed aside for the buzz of bigger Hollywood fare. Had the film managed a more fully funded Oscar campaign, I wonder if it could have managed a nomination, but alas it was not to be. I would have also included the misunderstood and underappreciated "Shutter Island". It had an outside chance of getting in, but it just had too many critics to be a Best Picture nominee. Had it captured the nomination, it would have made Scorsese/DiCaprio 4 for 4 in terms of Best Picture nominations, but all good streaks must come to an end. Finally, if I had a ballot I would have also included "The American" and "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World", but they never really had a realistic shot at a nomination. It's time now to deal with the group we have, and rank this year's Best Picture nominees.
