Thursday Theoretical Oscar Category

Welcome to a new weekly feature here at Movies With Abe. In my love for everything Oscar, it’s always fun to speculate on who or what might have been included given different circumstances. Though there are twenty-four fields recognized on Oscar night, that still neglects a handful of key players. As a result, I’d like to take a look each week at imagined categories, and who or what might have benefited from their existence.

The category: Best Scene

Why it should exist: Individual scenes are often the most memorable parts of lesser movies, and it’s worthwhile to recognize a film’s ability to capture undivided attention for a few minutes due to the action on screen. The MTV Movie Awards hand out trophies for Best Fight and Best Kiss, and this represents a more overarching award for the best single segment in a film.

Why it doesn’t exist: It’s hard to pick just five scenes from an entire year’s lot, and, somewhat like the Best Foreign Film race, there might have to be a rule that each film only gets to submit one choice scene to be recognized. That could result, however, in just awarding the top five films and their individual segments, but let’s hope that voters could be more open-minded and creative than that. The way I do it is by ranking the best scenes (more than five), but Oscar categories don't tend to work that way.

Who might have been nominated the past five years:
2011: The Artist, Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Moneyball
2010: Black Swan, Inception, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network
2009: Avatar, 500 Days of Summer, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Up
2008: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler
2007: The Assassination of Jesse James, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, No Country for Old Men, Once, There Will Be Blood

Who do you think might have been nominated?