Gary Thompson: Is there even a top 10 this year?

AS THE movie biz prepares for its first 10-candidate best-picture race in 56 years, insiders are having second thoughts.

In the past week, trade publications Variety and Hollywood Reporter have printed anonymous grousing from voters who question whether there are enough worthy nominees for the usual five slots, let alone 10.

When the academy announced a return to the 10-movie field, the idea was to boost sagging Oscar telecast ratings by broadening the field to include popular, critically successful movies like "The Dark Knight."

This year, as luck wouldn't have it, there is no "Dark Knight." James Cameron's "Avatar" has yet to arrive, so the year's runaway box-office hit was "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," and not even an industry desperate to pander to younger viewers wants to sink low enough to nominate that for best picture.

Voters might find room for "Star Trek" or "The Hangover," but that runs against the industry's recent instinct to favor arty, sometimes off-putting movies (the Oscars hit an all-time ratings low two years ago when it gave Best Picture to "No Country for Old Men").

There is mounting fear that this year's list of nominees will simply be a longer list of arty movies - more movies like "The Reader," and still no "Dark Knight."

For years, the Oscar telecast has been trying to link today's Hollywood output with a bygone, golden-age past; the expanded Best Picture field is a nod to that past.

There were 10 Best Picture nominees every year from 1932-1943, including the hallowed year of 1939 when "Gone With The Wind" competed against "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "The Wizard of Oz," "Stagecoach," "Of Mice and Men," "Ninotchka," "Dark Victory" and "Wuthering Heights."

Variety quoted film historian David Thomson as saying, "Hollywood has lost its ability to make those kinds of movies."

And one voter, who's surveyed most of the year's potential nominees, offered this bit of understatement: "This isn't 1939."

Many of this year's potential nominees - "Precious," Clint Eastwood's "Invictus," "The Road," "Lovely Bones," "Up in the Air" and "Nine" - have yet to be released, so it's only fair to wait and see.

There may be more waiting than seeing. The Hollywood Reporter ran a piece surveying voters who are having a hard time scrounging up five nominees for best original screenplay. In the past, this has been a category that helped launch the careers of Orson Welles, Billy Wilder and Paddy Chayefsky.

Now, it looks more like a haven for studio go-to guys. The nominees this year could include the writers of "Star Trek" and "The Hangover," whose credits also include "Revenge of the Fallen" and "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past."

Like the man said. It isn't 1939.