Wednesday Oscar Retrospective: The Real Best Pictures of 2010

Welcome back to a weekly feature here at Movies with Abe, Wednesday Oscar Retrospective. The Real Best Pictures is the seventh in a series of projects looking back at the past eight years of the Oscars, dating back to the first ceremony I watched and closely followed.

For this feature, imagine that an Oscar nomination for Best Picture was cumulative rather than based on votes in just that category. That means taking into account how well a film performed in other categories, and how many Oscars it eventually took home. Like the other series before it, this one is highly speculative, but the point is just to have fun, so chime in with your thoughts in the comments!

And the nominees were… Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter’s Bone

The keepers, no questions: Well, The King’s Speech and The Social Network stay, as do directorial nominees The Fighter and Black Swan.

The question marks: Despite its directional snub, Inception would have still stayed, as would True Grit, which lost all ten of its bids. Toy Story 3 would likely have had enough power to remain in the race. Because there were ten nominees, both The Kids Are All Right and Winter’s Bone would have stuck it out, though an unfixed number of slots like the following year would have likely discounted both of them.

The losers: None, under a ten-wide system.

The new inclusions: No film not nominated for Best Picture earned more than three nominations, and that was Alice in Wonderland, which would most certainly not have made it into the top category.

The new nominees: This time, probably the same as the old nominees, though the list would have been capped at eight if there didn’t need to be ten nominees.

Come back next week for a look at the Real Best Pictures of 2009.