Oscar Best Picture Nominations

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Oscar nominees: 311 movies contest for Best Picture

BY A CORRESPONDENT
4th January 2006

Oscar nominations for 2005-2006 are going to be highly contested this time, with 311 movies competing to make to the Academy short list. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this in a press release recently.

The number of movies asipring for the Oscar nominees are 16.5% higher than last year's. It is the first time in the last 32 years that over 300 movies are vying for the prestigious Oscar nominations for the Best Picture award.

The sharp rise in film submissions has been attributed partly to a surge in the number of feature-length documentaries playing theatrically (35 as against 15 last year). partly, this is also due to some movie distributor reorganizations, because of which a very large number of long-delayed film projects were released in 2005.

According to rules set by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscar Academy), a film must have a running time over minutes and must have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film, or a qualifying digital format to qualify for consideration as a feature-length motion picture. 

The movie must open in a commercial theater, for paid admission, in Los Angeles County between January 1, 2005, and midnight December 31, 2005, and run for seven consecutive days. 

Meanwhile, the Oscar Academy has mailed 5,798 nomination ballots for the 78th Academy Awards (Oscar Awards 2006) to voting members of the Oscar Academy.

The Academy informed that completed ballots must reach PricewaterhouseCoopers by 5 pm on Saturday, January 21, 2006. Those nomination ballots received after the deadline will not be eligible. PricewaterhouseCoopers has been assigned the task of tabulating all nomination and final award ballots. The firm will ensure that all elements of the balloting process are conducted perfectly.

Before mailing the ballots, PricewaterhouseCoopers runs a verification to ensure there are no duplicate ballots. Each nomination ballot is numbered. 

The Oscar Academy will announce the nominees for 78th Oscar on Tuesday, January 31, 2006 at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The Oscar Awards for oustanding performances will be presented on March 5, 2006, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland, and televised live by the ABC Television Network.