When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced last month that it was changing the way the best picture nominees were being determined it set off quite a flurry across the industry and among Oscar watchers.  No longer would their be a set 10 nominees, but five to 10 depending on the percentage of first place votes a film received.  Confused? Let's review the protocol, shall we?

Every year, Academy members rank their top films from one to 10 in the best picture category.  These films end up making the best picture nominees.  It turns out the Academy's accountants, PricewaterhouseCoopers, determined that if a film had to qualify for a nomination by receiving at least 5% of the member's first place votes (a somewhat arbitrary figure) there never would have been 10 nominees between 2001-2008, the eight years prior to 2009 when the new 10 was implemented.  A perfect excuse to revert back from the guaranteed 10 nominees of the past two years, no? (Sigh.)

In order to prove its point, the Academy revealed that in that same time period there were years when just 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 films would have been nominated.  And since every season there have been films who were surprisingly left off the list, it begs to reason it would be an interesting exercise to figure out what each nominee classes would have been under the new 5% rule.  Therefore, with no secrets from the PricewaterhouseCoopers archives or the Academy's vaults to assist me, this pundit has taken a stab at it.  Some of the films that would have made the cut will surprise you and some won't, but it certainly should make you feel better about the new rules.

Not that we need them...