OSCARINDEX: 'Lincoln' Knocks 'The Master' from No. 1 Spot as the 2013 Best Picture Field Becomes Clearer

The Bill Kuchman Chronicle OscarIndex is a nifty chart of the top ten films that you should be paying attention to in order to be ready for the the Oscars. Each film on the list is assigned an OscarIndex number, with the No. 1 film getting a score of 100. The following nine films then get OscarIndex numbers based on how much buzz they have going into the Academy Awards compared to the No. 1 film.

There's some exciting OscarIndex news this week. Not only has the top ten been shaken up, but the OscarIndex itself has been tweaked to deliver a more in-focus picture of which films you need to know in order to be prepared for the Oscars. Up until this week, the OscarIndex only counted the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay categories. Well, as of now, the OscarIndex is making all 24 Oscar categories a part of its calculations, assigning a different weight to each category based on its importance.

While it's possible to attribute the shakeup in the OscarIndex to its improved formula, the past few weeks had been showing The Master trending down, losing ground to Lincoln and a few other films. With this week's edition, Paul Thomas Anderson's film finally slips to No. 2, with Lincoln claiming the No. 1 spot.

It's clear now that there's a huge divide when it comes to the films in the Oscar discussion. If you want to pick the five films that are locks to make up the Academy's minimum Best Picture field of five, Lincoln, The Master, Les Misérables, Silver Linings Playbook and Argo are those films. Everything else beyond those five films would just be guessing. The Academy nominates between five and ten films for Best Picture, and I wouldn't be surprised if they lean closer to five than ten for the 2013 field.

Head past the jump to check out the full OscarIndex: October 31, 2012 Edition.