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Keeping all of the above in mind, here is my opinion about today’s various announcements. What I find strange about today’s nominations is their inconsistency. In the past, it was almost unimaginable for a title to garner a Best Picture nomination without either a Best Director or Best Screenplay nomination. In 2012, a full third of the Best Picture selections struck out in those two categories.

I would argue that War Horse is not a surprise in this regard as the most memorable aspect of the movie is a fallen barbed wire fence. The fact that it even attained a Best Picture nomination is a surprise I will address in a moment and if that is true of War Horse, it is double for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a film that only 48% of critics at Rotten Tomatoes enjoy. Yes, less than half of the critics who saw the film liked it. It is the third film that surprised me, though. The Help is a winner in every aspect possible and it seemed all but certain to gain at least a Best Adapted Screenplay nod as awards season ramped up. Instead, its candidacy has been reduced to the Actress categories as Hollywood yet again finds a new and improved way to dismiss female movie fans.

With regards to the Best Picture mess, in June of 2011, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a new wrinkle in the previously altered rules for Best Picture nominations. At the time, the statement sounded relatively innocuous. From that point forward (at least until the rules are changed again), the only titles eligible for nomination for Best Picture are the ones that garner at least 5% of the total first place ballots compiled. BOP’s Tom Houseman has evaluated the chaos this has created (unintentionally?) in chronicling the potential nominees over the past three months Any title that is considered very good by most rather than The Absolute Best by a few has their candidacy damaged by this rule. Conversely, a movie that isn’t beloved by all can still sneak a nomination if there is enough diehard support.

What I take from the above is this. Had there been ten nominations this year along with composite voting, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 would have received its much deserved Best Picture nod. Would many people argue it is the Best Picture of the year? Obviously not. Would there be a composite selection based upon the triumphant nature of the franchise? I say yes. The fact that this did not happen today reflects the above. The changes in the scoring system have led to its snubbing.

In place of the climactic Harry Potter movie are three films with little overall support but a frenzied ardor from their zealous fans. Tree of Life is frankly too strange for the body of AMPAS voters, but there are absolutely enough of them to sit through its unbearably pretentious, surreal sequences to laud the film. Similarly, War Horse is a feel good film about the nature of pet ownership that has the one thing We Bought a Zoo is missing: Steven Spielberg’s name. That alone seems to be enough to attain a nomination, as was the case with Letters from Iwo Jima. Tom Houseman mentioned this in his Nominations Predictions column. Some members of the Academy give Spielberg a body of work vote that causes unlikely Best Picture nominations.

And then there is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. When the list of Best Picture selections was announced two years ago, there was a ridiculous amount of outrage directed at The Blind Side. I rolled my eyes at the lot of it since the movie was in my top five for the year and actually made me cry at one point (Real men cry. Deal with it.). Compared to something such as A Serious Man, it was far superior and more than worthy in my evaluation, but this is how many awards trackers behave regarding nominations. We are protective of their exclusivity for whatever reason. Best Picture nominations are for whatever reason sacrosanct. Ceding spots to less qualified entrants is upsetting to some of us. This is why today’s nominations have launched a million tweets about the absurdity of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the inferior Scott Rudin production of the year.

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