There were only a few nominated science-fiction films before 2009, such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), Star Wars (1977) or E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

It has been rare that light comedy films win the Best Picture Oscar. The following have been the only 'comedies' that have won Best Picture: It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It With You (1938), the musical comedy Going My Way (1944), Tom Jones (1963), The Sting (1973), and Annie Hall (1977).

There are other borderline or hybrid comedies, including The Apartment (1960), Terms of Endearment (1983), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Forrest Gump (1994), Shakespeare in Love (1998) and the dark comedy American Beauty (1999).

Winners have included: The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the first true biopic The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), A Man for All Seasons (1966), Patton (1970), Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982), Amadeus (1984), Out of Africa (1985), The Last Emperor (1987), A Beautiful Mind (2001), and The King's Speech (2010).

The Best Picture war-themed winners include: Wings (1927/28), All Quiet on the Western Front (1929/30), Gone With the Wind (1939), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Casablanca (1942/43), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), From Here to Eternity (1953), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Patton (1970), The Deer Hunter (1978), Platoon (1986), Dances With Wolves (1990), Schindler's List (1993), Braveheart (1995), The English Patient (1996), and The Hurt Locker (2009).

Musical Best Picture winners are semi-rare and include only the following ten films: the first sound film to win Best Picture The Broadway Melody (1928/29), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Going My Way (1944), An American in Paris (1951), Gigi (1958), West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Oliver! (1968) and Chicago (2002).

There were five musical Best Picture winners between 1958 and 1968. Four of the ten Best Pictures in the 1960s were musicals (all based on previous Broadway hits). The only musical to receive 13 nominations was Chicago (2002) -- with six wins, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress.

A very small number of pure adventure (or action) films have ever been voted Best Picture, including: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Dances With Wolves (1990).

(Titanic (1997) was an action-adventure epic, as well as a disaster film and historical romance.)

Conversely, losers in the Best Picture category include lots of action-adventure film nominees, including: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Airport (1970), Deliverance (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), Jaws (1975), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Right Stuff (1983), The Mission (1986), The Fugitive (1993), and Apollo 13 (1995).

Only one true 'horror' film has won Best Picture, The Silence of the Lambs (1991), although it has also been classified as a thriller. Also, Hitchcock's first US film and Best Picture winner Rebecca (1940) may be counted as the only winning suspense-thriller, and No Country For Old Men (2007) was a winning dramatic crime-thriller.

(Best Picture nominees in this suspense-thriller genre have included Suspicion (1941), Gaslight (1944), Spellbound (1945), and The Sixth Sense (1999).)

There are a few hybrid crime films that have won Best Picture, including the crime drama On the Waterfront (1954), In the Heat of the Night (1967), The French Connection (1971) - both a crime film and action-thriller, the two Francis Ford Coppola crime/drama sagas: The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974), and Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006).

Notable Best Picture-nominated crime films include: The Racket (1928), Alibi (1928/29), I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932/33), Dead End (1937), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Bonnie And Clyde (1967), Chinatown (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Midnight Express (1978), Atlantic City (1981), Prizzi's Honor (1985), Mississippi Burning (1988), The Godfather: Part III (1990), GoodFellas (1990), Bugsy (1991), The Crying Game (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Fargo (1996), L.A. Confidential (1997), Traffic (2000), and Mystic River (2003).

Many mysteries and film noirs have been nominated for Best Picture, including: The Thin Man (1934), Citizen Kane (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Z (1969), Chinatown (1974), JFK (1991), The Fugitive (1993), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Gosford Park (2001).

Nominated genre-hybrid mysteries include Lost Horizon (1937) (fantasy), Rebecca (1940) (thriller), Suspicion (1941) (thriller), Gaslight (1944) (thriller), Spellbound (1945) (thriller), and The Sixth Sense (1999) (horror).

Mysteries and film noir often tend to do exceedingly well in the artistic performance categories (acting, writing, and directing) despite not earning Best Picture nominations. [Three prime examples of this: Laura (1944), Rear Window (1954), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974).]

There have only been thirteen other nominated Westerns (in addition to the winners), although some are hybrids: In Old Arizona (1928/29), Viva Villa! (1934), Stagecoach (1939), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), High Noon (1952), Shane (1953), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Giant (1956), The Alamo (1960), How the West Was Won (1963), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and True Grit (2010).

(For example, fantasy nominees have all lost, including A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Lost Horizon (1937), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Heaven Can Wait (1943), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Dr. Strangelove, Or: (1964), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Heaven Can Wait (1978), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Green Mile (1999), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).)

Up (2009) was also the first computer (or CG)-animated film to be Best Picture-nominated and the first animated film to receive a Best Picture nomination since animated films received their own category in 2001. Winning films in this category are often huge blockbusters.

They are rarely taken seriously, and therefore not often nominated for Best Picture, with the following exceptions: Skippy (1930/31), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Yearling (1946), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Mary Poppins (1964), Doctor Dolittle (1967), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Babe (1995). Often, they are nominated (or win) for various music-related categories.

Others that have received nominations include: The Champ (1931/32), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), The Hustler (1961), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Breaking Away (1979), Raging Bull (1980), Field of Dreams (1989), Jerry Maguire (1996), Seabiscuit (2003), and The Fighter (2010).

Romance films (often hybrids) that have won Best Picture include: Gone With the Wind (1939), Casablanca (1942), Marty (1955), Out of Africa (1985), The English Patient (1996), Titanic (1997), Shakespeare in Love (1998), and Slumdog Millionaire (2008).

Light romantic comedies that have won Best Picture include: It Happened One Night (1934) and Annie Hall (1977). There are many examples of both romances and romantic comedies that have been nominated for Best Picture.

Films with a British perspective, or with British/US production have done fairly well in the Best Picture category.

Examples include the war-romance Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Tom Jones (1963), Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982) and The King's Speech (2010).

Hamlet (1948) was both the first British production and the first non-American or non-Hollywood (foreign-made) film to be presented with the industry's top honor.