Avatar not winning Best Picture is a dream come true, but like dreams, the accompanying joy is a fleeting, misty feeling that has nearly dissipated. The Hurt Locker was a historic and flawless, but was it really the Best Picture? What is the definition of a Best Picture anyway?

In a few days, the Best Picture will be chosen from 10 movies rather than five. The move was made to try to include more movies the average moviegoer might have actually seen, but the end result — other than the inclusion of The Blind Side — was more movies like the original five. It’s a solid group, certainly varied in its subject matter, scale and intended audience, but it’s not the best collection of 10 movies one could imagine. If the Academy had been picking from 10 movies in 2003, the list would have been much more substantive even with the inclusion of Gangs of New York.

For those of us who have grown increasingly appalled at the idea of Avatar winning Best Picture — pick your excuse: horrible dialogue, 2-D character development that is subordinate to the 3-D action, the truly discomforting idea that these big blue people are all fine and one with nature, but a white guy pretending to be one of them becomes their chosen one, or whatever he was — there is some good news.

Perhaps the biggest surprise about Titanic’s Best Picture win is that it didn’t sink Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet into long, boring careers playing the same poorly written roles that made $1.8 billion. Now, if only a few others had made such wise career choices that year.