Hi Robin,

I agree with everything you said.
Would it hurt independent movies, or help them? My first inclination was that it would bury any chance independent films had, but writing this, I'm deliberating whether it would actually help them, distributing the big studio power on several films. On the other hand each studio might decide to support a single film, and then it would bury the independent movies, as the independent movie vote will split.

10 movies? It is just as easy to choose 5 good movies as to choose 10, but as you say even now 5 mediocre films are chosen, and I can't imagine how a top 10 list would look like.

But Hollywood is following the times, and these days top 10 lists is the way to go.

Looks to me to be a purely commercial move. "Oscar-nominated" is a huge draw for audiences, and now the industry has effectively doubled their ticket sales for Oscar season.
That said, there are certainly benefits for the films chosen.

I think there are very few ways people have to get reliable information on the quality of a film before they see it. Word of mouth yes, but this is vague at best unless you have friends whose taste really matches your own. The film industry lacks its "Michelin" writing accessible reviews and assigning stars according to an accepted matrix. Perhaps the great film critics of the 60s-70s filled this role somewhat but no one has taken their place, and no one attempts to be encyclopedic.

This is certainly one reason why Oscar nominations count for so much in the minds of the public. Even if they are not particularly reliable they are the most respected of the indices.

I'm totally with you Robin; the primary motivation behind the decision is clearly financial, to goose attendance to the "lower five." And, I'm not sure the lower five would actually have a shot at winning just because they receive a nomination. If, last year, for example, "Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days" had received a best picture nomination, is there any reason to think it would have actually won? Are those that nominate so different in taste from those who vote? Still, I suppose there's nothing wrong if the extra nomination are used to draw attention to worthy, lesser seen movies. If it becomes just a vehicle for one from Column A (Comedy), one from Column B (animated) and one from Column C (foreign language), then I think it will rightly be seen as just cinematic correctness, a sop to makers of the kinds of films that never win.