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Not all 10 best-picture nominees are deserving

This year’s crop of Oscar nominees gives us an interesting mix of films that support the decision to expand to 10 best picture hopefuls — and a few that perhaps didn’t deserve the honor. Had the list been held to five, most critics agree that “Avatar,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” and “Up in the Air” wou
/ Source: msnbc.com contributor

This year’s crop of Oscar nominees gives us an interesting mix of films that support the decision to expand to 10 best picture hopefuls — and a few that perhaps didn’t deserve the honor.

Had the list been held to five, most critics agree that “Avatar,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” and “Up in the Air” would have made the list. But then there's a dropoff. The remaining five all have their supporters, but there are reasons why each one wouldn't have made the list in a five-nominees-only year.

Oscar wasn’t ‘Blind’ to sentimental goo

If there’s one single best picture nominee that has “one of these things is not like the others” written all over it, it’s probably sappy feel-good docudrama “The Blind Side.” While writer-director John Lee Hancock’s previous fact-based sports tearjerker — 2002’s “The Rookie” — was a genuinely heartfelt and moving piece of work, this cloying and manipulative saintly-white-lady drama feels artificial from start to finish. Audiences are responding to it, heaven knows, but this sort of goo rarely makes its way to the top of the Oscar ladder. For the marketers at Warner Bros., “The Blind Side” was no doubt a much easier sell than the eccentric “Where the Wild Things Are” or the old-fashioned “Invictus,” but either of those two would have been a more deserving nominee.

Sci-fi slot should have gone to ‘Trek’

“District 9”
is exactly the kind of movie that the expansion of the best picture category was designed to net — a critical and box-office success in a genre that doesn’t traditionally get a lot of love during awards season. Again, science fiction would already have been represented at this year’s Oscars, courtesy of “Avatar,” but the expansion of the category has allowed for this nomination of a debut feature film from a non-American director. Personally, I would have been happier to see this slot go to “Star Trek”; “District 9,” for all its good ideas, features choppy storytelling (it goes from first-person documentary-style to omniscient-narrator with no warning whatsoever) and murky politics (if we’re to read it as an apartheid metaphor, then it’s yet another apartheid movie with a white protagonist).

‘Education’ deserved other nods, not best picture

Acclaimed British coming-of-age tale “An Education” makes for a tough call in the best picture category. Carey Mulligan’s Best Actress nomination was pretty much locked in as of Sundance 2009, and Nick Hornby’s screenplay seemed a likely nominee as well. (Some also expected nods for Alfred Molina and Rosamund Pike’s supporting performances as well, but those were not to be.) But best picture? While most critics were dazzled by Mulligan’s fine work, many (myself included) found themselves underwhelmed by the film’s final act, where the storytelling seemed to go off the rails. As smart-teens-reaching-maturity period pieces go, “Adventureland” was a more solid film.

Expanded list paid off for ‘Serious Man’

“A Serious Man,”
the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen, didn’t have the audience-friendly suspense and thrills of their Oscar-winning “No Country for Old Men,” but it wound up being one of the most intelligent and provocative movies they’ve ever made. The tale of a put upon professor (Michael Stuhlbarg, who deserved a Best Actor nomination himself) in the 1960s, this dark comedy had the feel of the Book of Job as reinterpreted by Philip Roth. There was a minor blip of controversy surrounding the film — some discussion surfaced over whether or not the Jewish Coens had made an anti-Semitic film — but as a fan of “A Serious Man,” I’m glad the Academy found room for it. In other years, it would possibly have been a well-regarded also-ran, but the 10 slots have put it in the running.

Animation is moving ‘Up’

After “WALL-E” didn’t garner a best picture nomination, I wrote an essay in which I lamented that the creation of the Best Animated Feature category would have the effect of ghettoizing animated movies. But when news broke last summer that the best picture shortlist was expanding to 10, most observers realized this meant a regular slot for Pixar’s highly regarded (and highly profitable) output. Depending on who you ask, “Up” may or may not be the finest that Pixar has delivered over the years, but the studio’s collective output over the last few decades has definitely earned it a slot alongside Walt Disney Studios as the makers of the only animated films to make it to the best picture category. (The only precedent here is 1991’s “Beauty and the Beast.”)

Alonso Duralde is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com.