As everyone in the Oscar world has already heard and spent hours analyzing, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided yesterday to go back to a 1930s/40s model of honoring ten films as the Best Picture nominees of the year.

I’m of mixed opinion. First, I’m afraid more limited-quality pictures will make it to the final list. While we can trust the Academy to an extent, they have shown a willingness to recognize films that aren’t really great, but are crowd pleasers. Will we see more films like Seabiscuit or The Green Mile? I’m not sure that will be to the betterment of the Academy. After all, it’s clear that they have done this so that more mainstream films can enter the competition and bring bigger audiences to the festivities.

Second, there’s the part of me that sees this as an opportunity for the clearly creative, distinctly antithetical choices to make it into the race. Films like Children of Men and Far From Heaven were heavily discussed as potential nominees, but whether it was because there were only five spots available and they just didn’t have the votes or if they just didn’t have the support we thought they did in the first place will never be known. However, for now, we can remain cautiously optimistic that this will give those smaller films that critics adore more of a shot at Best Picture.

But, there are four names that I think we can feel fairly certain will begin appearing with regularity in the Best Picture race:

Pixar: This is probably the best news ever for Pixar. It has long been believed that these films failed to earn nominations largely because a huge chunk of voters just decided to pigeonhole it into the Animated Feature category. While I think that may still happen, this certainly opens the door more easily for those films to get in there.

Focus Features: They have been getting more recognition, but now I think they will find a permanent slot in the Top Ten of the year, as long as they keep the solid work flowing, which seems to be the case. Then again, we could see several studios earning permanent berths in the final race including Miramax, The Weinstein Company and Fox Searchlight.

Bill Condon: Gods and Monsters, Kinsey, Dreamgirls. Each of these films had strong critics’ backing. The latter two were even heavy early favorites for nominations and Gods actually won an Oscar for Original Screenplay and was a heavy contender for Best Actor, so it may have had bigger support than we all remember. Ultimately, Condon has never received Oscar recognition. This rule change, rumored to be one of Condon’s post-Oscar telecast recommendations, does help him out…at least his pictures.

Edward Zwick: How many times can this guy miss the Oscar show? He’s been heavily talked about in three races so far this decade. Could this benefit a movie like The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond or Defiance? Films that seem to pander to Oscar voter proclivities, but don’t reach anything in the way of critic love. But this doesn’t mean he’s going to get a nomination. His next film, Love and Other Drugs, won’t be released until next year, so we’ll have to wait until then to further discuss his chances.

The same wait-and-see attitude will pervade the year as we have no idea the kind of movies that will make the cut, we can only presume. But our conjecture on Pixar can be confirmed easily this year if the critically adored and audience crowd please Up makes the list.

I’m still in the process of working on my first Hopefuls list of the year and now I’ll have to go back to the drawing board to expand it a little more.