It’s already September, and this means it’s officially awards season. Well, maybe not officially, but the Oscars seem to be a hot topic of discussion all of a sudden. On the one hand, the big fall film festivals kick off tomorrow with the opening of the Venice Film Festival. And Telluride and Toronto are about to begin, too. This means awards contenders will begin to be seen by critics and other buzz-makers.

Prematurely putting things into perspective, Vulture posted some Oscar nomination predictions Sunday evening, despite not yet seeing the majority of their picks, and bloggers at the Los Angeles Times responded with either continued analysis or the complaint that it’s too soon.

Meanwhile, those who aren’t necessarily excited or annoyed with the sudden arrival of the season at least have something to say about the Academy’s latest change of rules. This time they’ve revised the voting process for the Best Picture category — which now will include ten nomineees — in a way that could hurt a lot of films’ chances. The interesting thing is, some people believe the change is bad for The Hurt Locker, while other people think it’s beneficial to the film.

Check out what the film blogs are saying about the season and the new rules after the jump:

• Lane Brown at Vulture closed out the summer with his anticipatory predictions. He claims “awards season is almost upon us!” But he pretty much helped make it upon us already. Part of his reasoning for the early calls:
  

  Because it’s early and we’ve seen almost none of the probable contenders yet, we have absolutely no idea — but there’s no law that says we can’t speculate anyway! With this year’s expansion of the Best Picture category to ten slots, at least a couple of our predictions have to come true, right?

• Tom O’Neil at Gold Derby went in hoping to attack Brown’s predictions, but he came out supporting most of the picks:
  

  I love the fact that Vulture put “In the Loop” on its best pic list. Yes, we can dream! (Even if it’s delusional — snobbish Oscar voters are notorious for having no sense of humor. Suddenly, there’s optimism this year, though, because the best picture list expands to 10 entries.)

  All in all, Vulture actually did quite a good rundown. Yes, and 100% perfectly infallible, I’m sure! So I recommend it, with gusto, to all fellow kudos nuts.

• Patrick Goldstein at The Big Picture can’t believe people are making sight-unseen predictions already. “Gimme a break, please!” he writes. Here’s his advice to us so early in the game:
  

  My advice is not to take any of this stuff too seriously, although if you really want to drive yourself crazy, you could read the Envelope’s Tom O’Neil’s breathless critique of the Vulture’s picks, even though O’Neil admits that he hasn’t seen 95% of the movies either. Or you could worry about something more pressing, like whether the Earth will be hit by a massive asteroid in 2029.

• Steve Pond at TheWrap was thrust into the season a day early (see his introduction here) to break the news and comment on the rule change. Here’s his thoughts on how Oscar campaigning will be altered:
  

  The rule has the potential to rewrite the strategic rules for Oscar campaigning. In the past, studios and consultants simply fought tooth and nail for those number one votes — which were, of course, the only votes Academy members could cast. Now it’ll be absolutely crucial to make sure your film is also in the top five on as many ballots as possible.

  Maybe that’ll lead to more ads from broad-appeal films that might otherwise have seemed to be out of the running. Or maybe it’ll lead to more negative campaigning: after all, a good chunk of the voters don’t have to like your film the most, as long as you give them reasons to like it better than most of the other contenders.

• Cole Abaius at Film School Rejects has a lengthy explanation of how the new rule works, illustrating with a hypothetical idea of how the 1939 Best Picture race went. He likes the new voting process in general but has some problems with it, including this one:
  

  …having the most ballots choose you as #1 doesn’t necessarily secure a victory. As you can see from my sample ballot, The Wizard of Oz was chosen the most as the #1 film of the year, but along the way it got overtaken by Gone With the Wind for the win. I’m not sure exactly what this means, but if a film is polarizing and gets a huge amount of #1s but almost no #2s, it could be knocked out of the competition. Thus, the Oscar campaigns we’ve learned to hate so much may need to change their strategy in order to just gain a generally good feeling about the film so voters choose it up near the top, but not necessarily as #1. That’s right – winning by not aiming for the top spot.

• Dave Karger at Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch also addresses how the rule changes Oscar campaigning:
  

  The upshot here is that Oscar campaigners who used to try to cultivate a small cult of fans for their films will now need to canvass more broadly to snag those all-important No. 2 and No. 3 rankings as well. In other words, when it comes to individual Oscar ballots, winning is no longer everything.

• Linda Holmes at npr’s Monkey See complains that polarizing films won’t have any shot with this rule change, but she’s mostly upset with the ranking idea:
  

  But what stands out the most is how preposterous it is to expect people to create an orderedlist that plausibly ranks 10 movies, some of which many voters will not have seen, in order of quality. Because it’s one thing to simply not vote for a movie because you didn’t see it; it’s another thing to be compelled to assign a rank to it and have that ranking count.

• Helen O’Hara at Empire puts the rules in perspective of how they’d have effected past Best Picture races:
  

  Will this result in much of a change? It’s hard to say. In a year like 2006, where Crash beat the much-loved Brokeback Mountain and it’s generally thought that the vote was pretty close, it might’ve made a difference. Where there’s a juggernaut like Titanic or The Return of the King, we’re not so sure.

• David Poland at The Hot Blog takes a look at another race of the past as a comparison:
  

  The season that first comes to mind when I think of how this counting structure could change things is the year that Gladiator won. Wouldn’t the Soderbergh constituency that nominated both Erin Brockovich and Traffic have a very good chance of pushing one of those films into a win with #2 and #3 votes even though Gladiator became the winning default choice in a season that was split between less commercial, more weighty titles?

• Sasha Stone at Awards Daily believes 2009’s winner still would have won under these circumstances:
  

  Are they making it more complicated or less complicated. I can’t tell.  So we’ll be looking for the most popular film overall.  Hm.  In that way, it’s definitely possible that we may see more splitting between director and picture wins – and it might break up a sweep.  Then again, even under these rules, Slumdog still would have taken the whole thing.

• Kevin Jagernauth at The Playlist thinks this gives the Weinsteins and Tarantino an edge:
  

  it seems the process is geared to favor the most popular film, but not necessarily the best. Great, expect the Oscars to be the biggest farce in years? So once again, smaller films that don’t have the marketing dollars behind them to make sure all 5,800 Academy members get to see their film may lose out even if they get the most number one votes because the Weinsteins were able to schmooze everyone in town with cocktails and “Inglourious Basterds” DVDs.

• Lane Brown at Vulture wonders if Up now has the edge or if there other early releases that will fare better:
  

  Also, the switch presumably helps the movies seen by the most voters — so might this give an advantage to those released earlier in the year? Supposedly, the Weinstein Company’s Oscar strategy for Inglourious Basterds was to schedule it for August, then flood voters’ and journalists’ mailboxes with inexpensive, un-watermarked screeners around the time of the movie’s DVD release, at year’s end (other campaigners, whose films hit theaters in the fall, will have to shell out for costlier watermarked screeners, for fear of leakage). So if Up gets shafted, maybe this is a win for The Hurt Locker? Stay tuned, we guess!

• Kyle Buchanan at Movieline thinks it won’t be a win for The Hurt Locker thanks to this rule:
  

  Still, assuming that the voters will have seen all ten nominees may be a reach; while a smaller film like The Hurt Locker would pick up plenty of votes under the old system, one wonders whether it’ll now be wounded by the low rankings of voters who haven’t seen it.

• Another post from Steve Pond at TheWrap puts in more favor for The Hurt Locker’s chances:
  

  At this point, looking at a landscape of movies I haven’t seen and buzz I don’t trust, I’d suggest that Kathryn Bigelow’s tense little Iraq drama has a damn good chance of being the last film standing come next March 7…it just seems to me that in recent years the best picture winner is often as not the movie that nobody thought would be the sole survivor back in September — and right now, The Hurt Locker looks like that movie to me.

• Commenting at The Hot Blog, “mutinyco” has a great idea (enough to make the rounds on the blogs) for how the Academy should reveal the results of this new voting system:
  

  They need to treat the nominees as a top 10 list and not “nominees.” Then, structure the broadcast around the top 10 like American Idol and gradually count down the vote tabs from #10 to #1 throughout the program to create suspense.

• Kristopher Tapley at In Contention loves that commenter’s idea:
  

  Call me crazy, but this would be brilliant.  I kind of understand the desire to spare the feelings of those who would be “voted off” first.  That’s why the tabulations are destroyed after a few years.  No one wants people to know they were in last place, but come on — the nomination is the victory in many of those circumstances.  And talk about building a viewership.  We’re already inching toward People’s Choice Awards territory as it is, so why not bring all the walls down?

• Vince Mancini at FilmDrunk apparently saw some small print in the press release about the new Oscar rules. Find some of his finding below:
  

  In addition, FilmDrunk has learned exclusively of the following amendments to the voting system:

  • +20 votes are awarded if the film depicts the holocaust
  • +10 for other genocides
  • A film earns +5 votes if the main character is a dead celebrity
  • +5 if the lead is a musician
  • +15 if the main character is a musician who is also a dead celebrity
  • +40 for dead celebrity musicians during the holocaust

• John Lichman at Current_Movies doesn’t see too much of a drastic change here:
  

  This only effects Best Picture, so it isn’t the most ground breaking of changes as “changing the color of a carpet” or “nixing that one unfunny music number” would be. Despite sounding like a sure-fire way to be fair, one voter’s number one choice can easily be a major film not seen by 3/4s of the Academy Voters who–let’s be fair–don’t see nearly enough movies throughout the year. Sure, they’ll watch whatever is released in the October/November months.

  But earlier this year? You better hope firms are enclosing cash fees with their DVD screeners.

• Mark at I Watch Stuff is already annoyed with the 2010 Best Picture winner because he’s not sure how it will have gotten the Oscar:
  

  With this and the change to extend the Best Picture nominees to ten, I have to admit the Academy is working really hard to make sure I’ll at least be confused when I’m angry about who wins.

• Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily and an anonymous friend are also annoyed:
  

  This makes me sick, especially since the entire Academy Award process is already so lacking in integrity. Nor am I alone: as one top movie producer emailed me just now, “First, Tom Sherak as president. Now this new voting method. OMG. Oscar is drowning, and Tom is the lifeguard on duty? Yikes.”

• Alex Billington at FirstShowing thinks this only adds to the excitement of the Oscars. And he’s already super thrilled for the season to begin:
  

  Everyone will argue about this for months and months, and even after the Best Picture winner is chosen next year, I’m sure a few people will still argue about it. That’s just the nature of the Oscars, but it’s also why they’re so exciting. Right now I’m just looking forward to seeing what 10 movies end up getting nominated. Bring on the Oscars!