And still more on the Oscar change…

June 25th, 2009 at 09:17am Will Pfeifer

Over at the Onion’s AV Club, Noel Murray offers a look at one of the positive effects this doubling of nominated films may have…

And with more Best Picture slots open, studios and indies alike could be pushing harder to get their movies seen. What does that mean to you, the home viewer? It might–just might–mean that some smaller movies get longer runs in the big city arthouses, and even end up finding their way into the hinterlands. Everyone knocks the taste of the Academy (and often with good reason), but it’s not like everything that gets nominated is dowdy and self-serious and simplified. And it’s certainly true that plenty of excellent movies contend for the honor of contending each season. More of those excellent-but-low-priority movies may put up more than just a token campaign, and as a result, the average movie fan may become more aware of them, and may even get to see them.

Read the rest — including some potential downsides to the change — here.

Of course, with only two movie houses in the Rockford area (both owned by the same company), whether we’ll see any of these “excellent-but-low-priority” here is the big question. We might just get a dozen screens of more movies about Paul Blart.

Entry Filed under: Oscars