No doubt you've heard the news that next year's Academy Awards will have 10 nominees for Best Picture rather than five. This was standard practice in the 1930s and early '40s, but since then the Oscars have restricted themselves to just five honorees per year. And every year, some highly praised film or other becomes the "sixth nominee," the one that got away, the one that almost made the list.

But not anymore! Now the top five have-nots will join the five haves for a total of 10 nominees, and the whining about almost making the cut will start at #11. And we got to thinking about what films might have been nominated in years past if there had been more spots to fill. Last year, of course, it would have been The Dark Knight and The Wrestler, to name just two. But what about before that? Remember, if it had been nominated, that means it could have won, too....

2007: The Irish musical drama Once was a critical darling that won the Best Song category. Ratatouille won its animated Oscar, but it might have made it to the big show, too.

2004: After several years of blockbuster nominees, 2004's five choices were all lower in profile, with Million Dollar Baby ultimately winning. Additional nominees might have included Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, maybe even Spider-Man 2 or Kill Bill Volume 2.

1989: Driving Miss Daisy is such a boring, fusty choice for Best Picture, but its four competitors weren't particularly thrilling, either: Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dreams, and My Left Foot. Yawn. Imagine a world where in addition to those five, voters could have chosen from Batman, Do the Right Thing, sex, lies, and videotape, or The Abyss.

1983: Another dull year, with Terms of Endearment beating The Big Chill, The Dresser, The Right Stuff, and Tender Mercies. But let's throw Return of the Jedi into the mix. Or Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy. Or Scarface!

1978: Vietnam films dominated this year, with The Deer Hunter beating Coming Home, along with Heaven Can Wait, Midnight Express, and An Unmarried Woman. We'd surely have seen Superman, the year's biggest money-maker, as a sixth nominee, and maybe even Grease (the #2 film at the box office) as a seventh. After all, musicals used to be a big deal at the Oscars.

1969: Midnight Cowboy won the prize, though Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is better remembered today. The other nominees were Anne of the Thousand Days (which no one has heard of now), Hello, Dolly!, and the French-language Z. Considering how rarely foreign films are nominated for Best Picture, you can see how slim the pickings were in 1969. But that was the year of Easy Rider, True Grit (whose star, John Wayne, won Best Actor), and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, any of which could have been nominated.

1963: Another lackluster year at the Oscars. Tom Jones beat Cleopatra, America, America, How the West Was Won, and Lilies of the Field. You know what would have enlivened that Oscar telecast? Nominations for Dr. No, Charade, Hud (which won two acting prizes), and Hitchcock's The Birds.

(For further reading, consider this list of films that earned multiple nominations in other categories but not Best Picture. Also of interest is Filmsite's year-by-year list of snubs, which includes such acknowledged classics as The Searchers, and Some Like It Hot, The Empire Strikes Back, and just about everything by Hitchcock.)

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Eric D. Snider (website) didn't get nominated either, but that's cool.

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