Sneak Attack Nomination! Oscars Add Element of Surprise to Best Picture Category

The members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must have been watching a lot of "Lost" recently, or at least some M. Night Shyamalan movies. Why? Because they've added a shocking twist to the Oscar nomination process for Best Picture!

It's only been a couple of years since the Academy expanded the list of Best Picture nominees to 10, in an attempt to get more audience-friendly movies in there and give them a chance of winning. So far it's done just that, with movies like "Inception," "The Blind Side" and a couple of Pixar animated films making the cut (but not winning...that's still gone to lower-budget films like "The King's Speech" and "The Hurt Locker").

But there have been complaints both from Academy members and from audiences that 10 nominees is too many. The Academy members have a tough time coming up with that many movies that are deserving of an Oscar, and audiences might look at some of the choices (*cough "TheBlindSide" cough*) and wonder "how did that movie get there?"

So here's the Academy's new twist: the number of nominees for Best Picture will be kept a secret until all of the nominees are revealed in January. The list could include anywhere from five to 10 nominees, depending on the strength of the field. So, this year we could have only six films up for Best Picture, but next year we could have nine. Those crazy Academy governors!

The cutoff will be determined thusly: a movie will have to receive 5% of the first-place votes in order to earn a nomination. It might not seem like much, but once you get past the first few obvious choices, people's opinions tend to differ greatly.

What do you think? Good idea? No difference?