The Envelope‘s Mark Olsen is reporting that two rule changes have been instituted for the upcoming 81st Academy Awards. One, only two songs may be nominated from a single film henceforth. And two, the philistines on the foreign film committee who notoriously declined to vote Cristian Mingiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days onto the short list last year have lost a large portion of their power. The new rules will allow the 20-member Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee (i.e., friends/allies of Mark Johnson with a more sensitive point of view) to determine three of the nine films on the shortlist. The other six titles will be determined by the boobs.
