Unlucky Also-Rans

There's an article up at AwardsDaily featuring the "10 Unluckiest Films" -- that is, ten films of the last century that probably would've gotten nominated for Best Picture had the field been expanded to ten nominees -- as it will be this coming year. Their list:

10 – Close Encounters of the Third Kind – 1977
9 – I Want to Live – 1958
8 – Some Like It Hot – 1959
7 – East of Eden – 1955
6 – Thelma and Louise – 1991
5 – Almost Famous – 2000
4 – They Shoot Horses Don’t They – 1969
3 – The Player – 1992
2 – Being John Malkovich – 1999
1 – Hud – 1963

This list actually uses a quasi-scientific method for figuring these out, taking into account the other major Oscars each movie was nominated for and the other awards they had won in the run-up to the Oscars.

That's a pretty good method, but it's still flawed -- for example, The Dark Knight isn't on this list because it didn't get a Director or Screenplay nomination and got snubbed by the Golden Globes as well, but it's widely considered to have been the sixth Best Picture nominee, losing out to The Reader.

I tried to come up with my own list, but I realized it would be full of empty opinions. For example, I'd want to say Into the Wild, my personal favorite movie of 2007, would've been nominated.

I do have plenty of evidence to suggest it had a chance: the Directors Guild nominated it for their award, the Writers Guild nominated it for their award, and the Screen Actors Guild showered it with love, nominated Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook, and Catherine Keener, plus a Best Ensemble nomination. Usually, when you've got support from all three of those guilds, you're a major contender.

But the Academy clearly just didn't take to it. They nominated it for Supporting Actor (Holbrook) and Editing, and that's it. No Emile Hirsch, no Director nomination, no Adapted Screenplay nomination.

In other words, sure, it might've scored a Best Picture nomination if there had been ten nominees -- but there wasn't, and it didn't. It's all shoulda-coulda-woulda. Instead of thinking about the also-rans, we should be looking ahead to the new rules this year with one particular question: how many movies will get nominated that have actually connected with mass audiences? Because last year, with no Dark Knight or Wall-E, they dropped the ball.

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