Announcing TIME’s Best Best Picture Bracket. Vote on Oscar’s Greatest Film

  • Share
  • Read Later
Hulton-Deutsch Collection / CORBIS

Eighty-three movies have been dubbed Best Picture since the first Oscar ceremony in 1927. That year, the silent WWI flying film Wings won the top prize over two other nominees. It remains the only silent film to ever win Best Picture. (A little piece of trivia that may change this year should The Artist emerge victorious.)

And out of those 83 movies, there have been some real stinkers. But the Internet is negative enough. So why talk about those? Instead, we wanted to figure out what is the best Best Picture ever. And we thought there was no better way to do this than to have the readers of TIME Entertainment and TIME.com choose.

(Besides, we’ve already picked the 100 Best Movies of All-TIME. So you already know what we think.)

Starting Monday Feb. 6, and for each weekday until Thursday Feb. 23, you will have the opportunity to help choose the Best Best Picture of All-TIME. This will all take the form of an NCAA-style bracket. There are 16 films in the first round (the full 83 would have been way too many—it would’ve taken months), and each day two of them will face off. You vote for whichever you think is the better of the pair, and the winner moves on to the next round. On Feb. 24, the Friday before the Oscar ceremony, we’ll announce the winner.

Come back to TIME Entertainment on Monday and vote in our first match. We’re not going to say what movies are in the opening round, though we’re pretty sure that one of them will make you cry.

MORE: TIME’s 2012 Oscar Coverage